My goodbye to Piter

7/9/16

Last night I watched an eight year old cry. He buried his head into the crook of his mother’s shoulder and, for ten minutes, let the rest of the world disappear.  He sobbed quietly.  He kept moving his arms, squirming like he didn’t want to be held; but he pressed himself into his mother for ten minutes.

I watched from my chair.  I was silent, and only a meter away.  I felt helpless, and sad, and I wondered what he was thinking.  

The little boy was my host brother, Piter.  He was crying because in five minutes he would go to his friend’s house, and that would be our goodbye.  I stayed with Piter’s family for two weeks, and then it was time for me to move on.  He could not express the emotions he felt.  Even if he was in control of his sadness, his english was very limited.  Our time together had very little verbal communication.  Instead we played games, ran, and lounged together.  

When Piter finally looked up from his mother’s damp shirt, his eyes were bright red.  He had tired himself of crying.  He glanced from me to the dinner table and back.  Even while full of impassioned emotion, he was still a shy boy.  I watched him with a feignt smile, still unsure of what to do with myself.  I was calm, but had a light blanket of sadness over me.  I felt drowsy, like the wine had worked its way deep into my chest.

I hugged Piter.  He did not cry anymore.  We embraced, he looked at me for two short seconds, then he walked away holding his father’s hand. I still watched from my chair.  I released my breath, inhaled deeply, and sighed it away.

It is a beautiful sadness, what Piter felt.  His assumed wish to continue our friendship.  Like we had been brothers, or friends, for years.  He took me leaving as a great loss.  

“He is a strong boy,” his father said to me, “Maybe even stronger, for knowing you.”

By the time Piter got to his friend’s house, I am sure he felt much better.  The ache of our goodbye would subside, and he would play with no more sadness than before he met me.  Maybe I should have cried with him, because now our goodbye is continuing through my head.  Watching a child cry honest tears because I was leaving feels very defining.  The symbolism of my helplessness, and the discomfort in Piter’s face, are stuck in my head.

Piter is definitely a strong boy.  His audacity with games, his ability to hang with the older kids.  He did not let being small and different define who he was.  I see him in a very specific light.  I wonder, now, what he thinks of me.  How often will he think of me, in the next 80 years of life? How much influence could I have on this single child in two week’s time?

My words must have done very little, since he could not understand me.  Our friendship was based greatly upon kicking a ball between two posts.  I never philosophized with Piter, and I never sat him down for a life lesson.  We simply existed in the same area for 14 days, and then I left.  

Arrogantly, egocentrically, I hope I made a difference in him.  I hope he longs for travel.  I hope he wonders about outside cultures, and people, and wants to understand life in a way Italy can’t show.  Maybe someday I will meet Piter in Bangladesh at a cafe drinking tea, or in Seattle watching the Northwest rain fall.  And we will discuss the immensity of the world; the contrasts of people on it.  

It must have been world shaking for Piter.  At 8 years old, he was going on his second sleep-over when I left.  So for a strange man who doesn’t speak his language to live in his house, absorbing his one safe place, it must have had some effect.  I can only hope I inspired him, and later in life he looks back on this intense time fondly.

What else can I hope for? All I have is the belief that by living my life I have effected other people positively.  Piter is a strong boy, with a curiosity for the outside world, or at least when that world is shown to him.  I just hope I showed him the world in a way that makes him long for more.