No, don't want/need the plate but I am glad that she asked. The plate was a souvenir from my first trip to Guatemala --February 1996!! 25 years ago!! The plate is a reminder of the trip yes. But the plate changes nothing in my life. The trip? Yes, it was a rite of passage on my journey into adulthood. No regrets from the trip but a plate, trinket, or picture from the trip changes nothing.
From time to time I will tell people that I don't collect things--I collect people. And I like to think that I am almost a minimalist--I am at least striving to be.
Back to the plate! No the trip! What I have kept from the trip! I was fortunate that even though this was a teen mission/service trip and I was a (25 year old) chaperone, I was able to invite my mom to come along. The teens that were on the trip are adults now...and over the years I have seen some of them again and of course we have that connection from our trip.
But there is a special little girl whom I have never forgotten. I was only with her minutes but I learned a lesson from her and I wonder if she remembers me. One day the group took a trip to a village on the coast. We stopped in a village and immediately we were surrounded by a flood of children to see what we were going to pass out. As a young 25 year old woman I had my hair pulled back into a long pony tail of untamed curls. Back them my hair, even though it was brown, was as unruly as Merida's in the movie BRAVE. This little village girl sat down beside me touched my curls and my pale skin. Maybe I was that first American she had met? I didn't speak Spanish....and she didn't speak English. We had only a few minutes. So I smiled and touched her beautiful black hair and her dark skin. I needed her to know that it was MY privilege to meet HER. I needed her to know that I wasn't a traveling dignitary. She was not a "safari native side-show". She mattered.
Collect people
Use things--love people
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