The most beautiful things in Ghana are green oranges. If you’re a close friend or family member of mine, you’ve probably already read my post this week at IMAGE Journal’s “Good Letters” blog.
Tonight, while riding home from a spontaneous Girls’ Night w/the six Tema Home girl smalls, plus Pam, Martha, and Susan, I was thinking again about how grief can make our minds crystallize pedestrian moments and see in them many things of beauty.
One of tonight’s beautiful things was 6-year-old Miss D. curled up in my lap on the bus, nearly falling asleep several times, but then sitting up again to insist that we pray for her friends at the Tema House, Mama Pam, or me and my husband. She loves to be loved. Her little shorn head is soft and nubbly; if you even accidentally touch her shoulder, she draws your arm around her places your hand against her temple, guiding your fingers to stroke her cheek. It’s hard to think of her mother or father selling her, sending her away, letting her go to work at the lakeside. It makes me wonder what kind of pain each of them harbored.
