PAULINA, THE FIRST OF THE GREAT DANES

I was homesick that morning. But not really much more homesick than any other day. This isn’t that kind of story – the kind where something happens exactly when you need it to happen.
 
There was wood scattered on the ground that day, and not just a bunch of twigs. A windy night had broken branches off the mango trees – substantial pieces of wood – and strewn them about.
 
I was dressed for church. The brick structure had cement pews, windows without panes, and no door. Its simplicity made no difference in the eyes of its followers. And while I went for the pleasure of company, most others went to believe in something. We were not so different in what we sought.

I walked 50 steps across the road behind my house, and then the church was beside me.

​Before I stepped inside, I saw a woman, barefoot, thundering around in the shadow of the church. She wore a red spotted bandana, tied tight around her head. Her clothes were ripped, but clean. A few sticks were stacked in her arms, and she was bending down to collect more. The Mass was about to start, but people had stopped to watch her rather than enter the church.
 
I pulled back from the doorway too, and then someone standing next to me asked the woman what she was doing. She barely looked up as she told us she was collecting wood for her fire later, to cook her xima, and that she wouldn’t be wasting her money on fuel now. That she’d be self-sufficient. 

She said it like it was obvious – like it was foolish that no one else was doing it. I felt the force of a stubborn will that I knew well, that I’d seen in someone I knew, many times before.

​I helped her collect more wood. We collected ten pieces, maybe 15. The Mass started. She looked much older when I leaned down to see her close –skin pulled taut by the sun but for the few wrinkles framing her mouth. She smiled with five visible teeth. We tied up the wood and tucked it into her capulana, and she hoisted the makeshift sack of sticks onto her head.

​I watched her walk away from me, and sensed the presence of someone I knew and loved, departing. I couldn’t let her go – not once I’d realized who she reminded me of. Not once I’d realized what she could mean to me. So I followed her into the church. Maybe she knew I wanted to stay close to her, because she beckoned me to her pew. 

Once the Mass ended, I showed her where I lived, and I gave her water when she asked for it. I showed her my stove and charcoal, and walked with her for a long while back to her house, inviting myself into her life. She meant a great deal to me, for someone I’d just met.

She showed me her farm a few days later. She told me she didn’t know how old she was, and that it was becoming more difficult to eat with so few teeth. The more I saw her and visited her – watching her prepare her own corn flour, cook and cart water, travel to and from her farm alone – the more I felt a comfort, a familiar strength from home.

​It's a rare thing – to sense something so familiar in another that we feel we already know them. The pride in Paulina's voice made me feel – in a deep, profound way – the presence of my mother. ​She was like my mother.

And so I became one of her followers.

​Her name is Paulina, and she is the first of the Great Danes.