A Mother's Love

Today I leave Greece and all the beautiful people I've come to love deeply. But unlike most goodbyes, where people may hug and kiss and share tears, each going back to a home with a warm bed and plenty of food, this goodbye was very different. I go home to my wonderful life, while these 700 people live in limbo.

Yesterday I had lunch with a mother and her three children. They left Afghanistan because their daughters were not safe, and the youngest, just two years old, has obvious developmental issues. As we sat in their tent, she told us that they walked through Afghanistan and Turkey to get to Greece. Through the mountains she climbed, with her sick baby on her back, sleeping on the side of the dirt path. Then they boarded a little boat with 40 other people to cross over to Lesbos. For this mother, her goal is Germany, because that's where she believes her daughter will get the best care.

This woman spent all morning cooking us lunch...fresh, real lunch. It's delicious, and obviously cooked with love in a make-shift refugee kitchen. I eat and eat and eat, fully aware that my eating is a sign of love and respect to her. I'm also very aware that they used what very little money they had to buy food to make for this special lunch. She is obviously happy to have guests, and thoroughly overjoyed by how much we're eating. Afghani people are very generous, and love welcoming people into their home. It's this compassion and generosity that they lead with here at the camp. So this is more than just lunch. It's tradition.

As we sit there and talk, I look at her 10-year-old daughter's cot. She is a quiet and shy girl, with a soft sweetness that is tangible. On this makeshift bed she has her favorite teddy bear, holding a picture frame we made together at the start of the week. In the frame is a picture of me hugging the girl, both of us smiling. The full gravity of our impact on these families sets in, and I start crying. The daughter comes and sits beside me. I hug her, kiss her, tell her I love her. As we leave, we promise to come back. And I'm betting that when we do, I'll find that same picture in that frame on her bed. But I hope that I don't see them there again. I hope they make their way to Germany and their littlest gets help.

These shoes you see here belong to the kids in my adopted Afghani family. Yes, I'm now an official auntie to an Afghani family. These little shoes symbolize so much for me. Innocence and resilience in the face of extreme violence and fear. The forgotten children of war. The fact that above all, and I fully and truly mean above everything, love wins.

I come home a different person. Broken and rebuilt by the love of refugees.

Originally published Nov. 12, 2016