A Dialect of Smiles: Brazil

    She extended her little arm, gripping the hand-sewn doll with the hand-painted face by the arm, hopeful inquiry written across her small, pretty face.  "No, it's yours!" I explained, while aiding my communication with pronounced gestures. "I brought it for you...to keep." As understanding hit her, sparkles flooded her almost black eyes, and her soft pink lips parted showcasing a smile infused with pure joy.  The doll was drawn close to her chest, pressed tightly against her heart.  I caught one last glimpse of her exuberance before her small feet carried her off.  The doll still held tight with all the love a little girl could bestow, her light brown ponytail bouncing with each step as she followed her mama back to a severely aging house with few furnishings.

     Smiles. They're simple. They're complex.  They can be effortlessly given, yet they're miraculously intricate.  They can penetrate any language, any culture, any society.  They capture love and carry it along with them.  They are far more valuable than we give them credit.

     Her name was Isabel.  I'm guessing she was about four.  She had red heat bumps scattered all over her light brown skin, and a pair of dirty, pink flip-flops that kept slipping onto floor as I held her.  Her smile was sweet and delicate...genuine.  She was bonita (beautiful)!  The moment she asked to be held my heart was stolen. 

 

     As I pulled out a doll, that I had stuffed in my back-pack to personally give out, an audible gasp escaped Isabel's lips.  Her hand reached out to hold the cloth doll. She took turns cradling it like a baby and then sitting it up like a toddler.  The clean floral tights on the doll were fingered and admired.  The doll's light-brown arms were made to rest in it's lap.  Then the doll would quite unexpectedly stand up and jump before sitting back down to have its legs admired again. 

 

     Every once in a while she would look up with a twinkly eye and smile at me.  She spoke Portuguese.  I spoke English.  I knew only a few Portuguese words, sparsely picked up in the previous few days.  She knew less English.  Yet, never for a moment did that cause an aperture between us.  Our smiles and our love was all we needed. 

 

     As a writer, words are important to me. Tackling the challenge of finding how they fit together to make something beautiful is something powerful to me.  Communications is a beautiful gift, and also extremely important to me.  But, this mission trip taught me something equally important. Words aren't everything. Love is everything. Love is vital. And smiles are compact gifts that aren't distributed enough.  Smiles are a dialect of their own, and that dialect is universal.

 

Go! Smile! Love someone today!  Love someone now!

~Brooke