Child Observation Report

The mother and I sat on the curb, watching the group of volunteers pack up as the sun set. It was Wednesday, the night we go to feed and clothe the homeless. Her fingers were splayed across her bowed head. Twenty kids danced around us, glee rolling off them in pearls of sweat. She said her kids were excited for school to begin. As a rising high school junior, I could relate. I had already bought my school supplies: my pencils and pens, notebooks, calculator, and, of course, backpack. The mother tearfully confided that none of these children, including her own, had anything to use as a backpack. Her desperate voice brought me to tears. In the past two years, I volunteered on the same street, bearing boxes of donated food and clothes. In that time, I encountered stories of ineffable trauma. But that August evening, the mother volleying sobs led me somewhere I had never been before.

Before that day, I found comfort in complacency. I thought if I did not help, someone else would.
But something told me that this was not something I

could defer to some unknown miracle worker; I had to do this for them. I scavenged my garage, finding only six backpacks. I went door to door and asked for donations. Within a day, we had satchels, crayons, notebooks, and pens. To be safe, I went to WalMart and bought ten new backpacks, replete with vibrant colors and sporting smiling cartoon faces.

It would have been so easy to forgo this project.

Canvassing donations and searching through flotsam was laborious and tiring; I had pushed myself so far out of my comfort zone I found myself facing a new reality. What a relief it would have been to just foist the mother and her children off to that benevolent figment! Yet her sobs resonated in me, and I heard the sobbing of my mother, my aunt, my sister, and myself. Any of us could have been crying on that curb, waiting for someone to help. Her pain brought me face to face with my own misconception about sympathy. There is a difference, I realized, between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy is listening and walking away, pitying. Empathy is embracing others’ pain as if it were your own and acting on it. My belief on helping others was rooted in sympathy and, by extension, indolence and naiveté. In responding to this mother, I realized that helping others is a an unremitting

responsibility.

The next Wednesday, each backpack, stuffed with school supplies, was taken. I ran briskly from parent to parent, my arms full of backpacks, watching with gratification as their eyes lit up with joy. There were relieved hugs; tears flowed as if from a faucet. I was gifted with the sight of twenty kids digging through their bags. In those faces were doctors, artists, and lawyers. I understand that empathy is a vulnerable choice. At the same time, I have begun to see how meaningful it can be and I am filled with hope.