Jayden Jayden Everywhere a Jayden

1. Rip my heart out and run over it with a lawn mower…

December 24, 2010. At 10:00am Christmas Eve morning in Buenos Aires we rolled through Park Las Heras on our way back to the apartment after an early morning power walk. It was a gorgeous sunny day and our hearts were filled to the brim with an elixir of happiness and love, the kind that bursts from your chest at Christmas. We were talking about our Vernon and Calgary kids as we hurried along, knowing that they would be almost ready for the Christmas rush with lots of company and turkey and presents stacked as high as dreams can fly. We talked about our toddler grandkids, Jayden and Kinsley, and knew that their Christmas excitement would be priceless, filled with Santa Claus and wrapping paper and presents as big as they are – such is the privilege of the land from whence we come. We were really missing our grandkids. We were moving fairly fast when we rounded the corner. And there they were. That family of four.

The first person I saw was a grimy little boy about Jayden’s age. He was sitting on the sidewalk leaning against the outside wall of the bank. It looked like he had been crying – or did I only imagine that? He had a juice box in one hand and an almost empty bag of chips in the other. Junk food for breakfast on Christmas Eve morning. He looked at us with eyes that said something I had never seen before – and it sent jolts of electricity into every valve and vessel in my heart. Nearby lay his mother and two sisters. Sprawled on the sidewalk in front of the bank. They were all asleep – sound asleep with arms entwined for company, or protection. Mother, daughter about twelve and daughter about eight. All those people - sound asleep. My God! My eyes surveyed the scene again in disbelief. Who was watching the little boy? Worry churned inside my stomach. Who on earth was watching over this little boy on Christmas Eve morning while he ate junk food? At that age for sure our grandson, Jayden, could not be trusted to sit still, or stay where he should or do what he should. And what if he wandered off or was lured away by someone, this grimy little boy who did not seem to have a home? Who of these sleeping people would even know? The churning in my stomach made me feel sick. My eyes started leaking. A hand covered my mouth and then quickly brushed the tears away. We walked past. Imagined or real, I could feel the ire of the little boy’s circumstances boring into every aspect of my plush life and ripping it to pieces. How dare we all have so much when he has so little on Christmas Eve morning in sunny Buenos Aires? How dare we?

By the time that train of thought thundered down the tracks inside my brain I couldn’t even talk and when Richard looked down to see why I hadn’t answered his question he realized in shock that the person he was with had transformed from an upright woman of adventure into an emotionally distressed grandmother who had just been kicked in the face by the boots of reality.

I mean, out of control. Crying like a baby.

“We’ve got to do something to help these people!” I wailed. “It’s Christmas Eve!” …said like, it’s Christmas EEEvvvvee! “What can we do to help them? What can we do?” Richard wanted to know. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we can give them some money, but that little boy deserves more for Christmas than he has right now. He didn’t ask for these terrible circumstances!” So we devised a plan to give them a fair amount of money – I know, I know, there are better ways to handle these issues, we’ve been told that a million times and we’ve told others that a million times. But at that emotional exclamation point in our lives there was nothing else we could think of to do. That family needed a gift for Christmas, end of story.

We calculated our cash situation and dug into the wallet. Richard walked toward them. I stood partially hidden in a doorway and watched because, embarrassing as it was, I could not stop crying and I didn’t want the little boy to see me. Richard woke the mother and handed her the wad of cash. She must have been bewildered beyond words. Tears still rolled down my face and my one and only Kleenex was reduced to the size of a soaking wet marble. The caretaker came out of the building and stood in the doorway beside me. He quickly looked around to see what was going on: foreign woman bawling noisily in his doorway, tall, grey-haired man trying to wake the mother sleeping on the sidewalk, the grim and grimy little three year old suspiciously watching the stranger trying to wake his mother. Satisfied that everything was okay, the caretaker said in broken English. “It’s all right.’ I looked at him with astonishment on my face and he said again, ‘don’t worry, it’s all right.’ I thought he was an escapee from a mental ward. In fact I probably had the same look in my eyes that I had just seen in the little boy’s eyes only moments before! ‘What is all right?’ I wanted to scream at him. What on earth could be all right when a mother and her children are sleeping in the street on Christmas Eve morning and her little boy is sitting by himself eating junk food? What one thing about that is all right? I was so upset I wanted to smack him. But of course, he was just trying to be kind and calm me down. Maybe it was his way of saying that this is the way they live, so everything for them is all right. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Richard managed to hand over the wad of cash. I’m sure the mother never understood what the whole thing was about. We never saw them again even though we walked past that corner almost everyday for the next month. What happened to them we do not know, we just hope they shared a special little something for Christmas.

2. Rip my heart out again…

January 25, 2011. Quito, Ecuador. Stranded in Quito for days because of food poisoning but on this day we finally had enough energy to take on an impossibly crowded city bus. And the handicraft market. It was a good-looking, sunny day and we were happy to be mobile. While we were at the market a tiny indigenous lady in traditional clothing with a tiny, tiny black haired baby strapped to her back, asked us to buy some gum. These gum sellers are everywhere. We said, ‘no gracias’. The imploring look on her face and in her eyes read as an entire volume about motherhood, vulnerability and indigenous poverty but we are hardened to that - we said no again. After she left I said to Richard that I changed my mind. I wanted the gum after all. Guilty conscience? I don’t know. I ran after her and bought the gum. Of course she ripped me off and never thought twice about it, that’s what they do. Even though they are vulnerable, they are sales people and it’s their job. Everyone knows that. On the way back to find Richard I spotted Jayden.

His mother worked in a stall at the market, the last booth at the end of a long row. The little boy, same age as Jayden, was sitting by himself at the side of the stall, completely out of sight from his mother or any caregiver. He sat cross legged on the sidewalk and leaned against the canvas wall of the stall. He was comfortable in that place and had probably spent time there everyday for most of his life. Dozens of people walking by had to move out and around him. He was happily eating by himself and had placed his breakfast playfully on the sidewalk. On the filthy sidewalk. A half eaten croissant. While I watched he picked it up, pulled a bite and then tossed it back down on the cement.

I arrived back where Richard was waiting with tears in my eyes again. But I didn’t want another breakdown so merely mentioned that the little boy over there was using the sidewalk as his breakfast table. I quickly wiped away the signs so Richard wouldn’t notice. We looked back at the space on the sidewalk. It was empty. The little boy had disappeared and taken the croissant with him.

As people who love to travel and have been doing so for years, we have witnessed disturbing events in many countries, wealthy and poor. We lived in Mexico for 2 ½ years for goodness sake! Even though countless of our experiences have been sad or painful or upsetting, I have usually been able to handle them in an adult way. But on this trip it seems that children who remind me of my grandson, Jayden, little boys who are vulnerable and underprivileged, set off an emotional alarm in my head that I have trouble turning off. We cannot fix all the broken bits in the world; we know that. I know that. But…