Caitlin's Story

Three years ago, I took Dr. Laurel Kennedy’s First-year Seminar entitled, “To Have a Home.” Each week, the class traveled to Newark to assist in building a Habitat for Humanity house. As that first semester of mine wound down, the house was nearly complete, and an eager mother and her two small children prepared to move in.

Now those three years have elapsed, and I have begun my senior year at Denison. As chance would have it, Dr. Kennedy is again teaching the first-year seminar I took, and a couple of weeks ago, the class found out that it would be rehabilitating that same home we had worked on three years ago. Because my class is still here on campus, Dr. Kennedy invited all of us to accompany the first-year students to the house on their first visit, so that we could tell them a little about the
history of its construction.

For one reason or another, the previous occupants of the home had left abruptly, and when we arrived at the home, many of their belongings had been left behind and were strewn all about. These ranged from children’s clothes and toys, to dishes and even some out–of-place-looking skis. I thought it would be wasteful to toss all of this into the dumpster we’ve been provided, so I suggested we donate anything usable to a local shelter. As we were sorting the items, one of the first-year students picked up a Strawberry Shortcake backpack and said, “I bet some little girl would love this.” We put the bag in a box, and all of the goods were donated.

Just a few days later, I joined a group of volunteers who go to the shelter each weekend to take the children for a field trip. When I came through the door, I spotted one of the youngest of those children, a two-year-old girl, toddling down the hall in my direction. When she turned around to give her mother a goodbye hug, I spotted it: that same Strawberry Shortcake backpack we had rescued just days before. I couldn’t help but smile. Later, when I asked her to leave the bag in the car, this timid, shy little girl—whom I thought could only say ‘Mommy’—turned to me and stammered, “No! My babies!” So we toted that bag around all evening. And it was not until later that I found out she had been carrying it everywhere since she found it. Displaced from her home by frightening conditions, the backpack allowed her to keep her most treasured belongings with her.

So one little backpack, left behind as unimportant, became the world for this little two-year-old, and it reminded me that things have a funny way of working themselves out.