For a long time, Suyen, Anielka and I lie on our backs looking up at the stars. Suyen has her arm looped through mine; her dark head is on my shoulder. Anielka cuddles close to us. Around my neck is a necklace with three blue stones. I don’t know who made it, but I’m wearing it on loan from Suyen, who occasionally reaches up to readjust it. It’s always crooked, she tells me, ending with her usual, “Entiende?” She wants to make sure I understand every word she gives me.
I point straight up, asking in broken Spanish if they know what star that is, the bright one clear above us. Suyen shakes her head.
“La estrella del norte,” I say, although I’m not sure that the words will have any meaning to girls who call their dog “perro” and every flower, “flor.” I wish I could tell them some of the mythology behind the stars, something I loved as a little girl, but I don’t know how to explain Artemis’ love for Orion, or where exactly to find Casseopia, the doomed queen.
So we settle for singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. The girls sing it in Spanish; I try in English. Then Suyen starts to sing “Open the Eyes of My Heart”, again in Spanish, but when I join in English, she joins. Someone along the way has taught her the words.
We lie on the ground with our feet propped against the outer walls of the dormitorios, gasping as shooting stars fly by. Here, with the girls’ arms thrown around my stomach, heads on my shoulders, I realize what a gift it is to have this time with them. They could be with anyone else right now: with Tia Ami in the kitchen, or at the church service in Los Angeles or using Mickey and Thomas as human jungle gyms. Instead, they are quiet, contentedly curled up with me, counting the stars.
My heart skips with gladness. All the petty worries of the day melt into the concrete. I realize in a flash with what intensity I ache to have a family of my own one day, what a great delight it will be to hold my own children and teach them to have this same longing for the stars and the God who made them. For now, what an incredible blessing it is to be able to hold these beautiful girls, even for a few minutes, and to know that what I’m feeling is only a small reflection of the love their Abba God has for them.
Suyen y yo
“When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place—what are mere mortals that you should think about them, humans beings that you should care for them? Yet you made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.” –Psalm 8: 3-5
