Fly Away

I couldn’t tell you why these things happen. I couldn’t explain to you why they’re supposed to happen. But what I can tell you is how to make an origami crane. First, all you need is a square piece of paper and a little bit of boredom. It doesn’t have to be a special kind of origami paper. Or a special kind of boredom. It can be anything you find lying around. Like a gum wrapper, or a Kleenex or a pamphlet for restless leg syndrome on a hospital coffee table. Most of the paper you’ll find is going to be in a rectangle but you can work with that. Just fold down a corner to match it up with the opposite edge, fold, crease, maybe put a little spit on it, and rip it. Now you should have a square.

What you should know about origami is that it involves a lot of folding and unfolding. So not all the work you do at first will be immediately useful to the next step. Patience is key. Every fold has a purpose, some just know theirs sooner than others. When she was diagnosed a few months ago, it didn’t seem real. But at the same time, it couldn’t be more real. It’s one of those things you think will never happen to you. Then it did. Fold and crease.

Once you have your square, you want to fold it corner to corner, three times. Then unfold it to just one. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy for her. But she still fought. Some days you wouldn’t even be able to tell how sick she really was. When she smiled, for a second you would forget the disease lurking beneath the surface. Unfold.

Now you should have a triangle with the open end pointed towards you. It gets kind of tricky here, but I’ll do my best to explain. Turn each half of the triangle in on itself, outside in. Do the same on both sides. This one doesn’t unfold. I remember the first time I saw her without hair. It was so strange. I barely recognized her without it. Her face was still there, just a little thinner than before. Tuck.

If you’ve done it right so far, you should have a smaller diamond than before, still with the open side pointed at you. The paper should make a kind of zig-zag pattern under the first flap. Now you take the outside corner of the diamond and fold it to the center. Repeat on the opposite corner, then turn it over and do the same to the other side. That day we went to see her, she was finally out of the hospital. She was sitting in that pale, pink recliner blending into the color of white walls in dim light; not quite gray but not truly white either. I don’t know why, but it was somehow harder to talk to her like this. Boxes of their stuff were shoved aside to make room for more. Home was transformed into just a house in a matter of weeks. How could a disease take that away too? Flip.

Unfold the doors you just made and lift the first flap on one side. Now just like before, tuck the sides in again and crease all the way to the top corner. Repeat on both sides and lift the diamond upwards from the center. This is the bottom of the wing. After she moved to Seattle for treatment, we didn’t get to see her much. There was the occasional picture on Facebook of her taking short walks outside with her kids. A few posts about how she was feeling. Everything seemed to be at a standstill. She wasn’t getting better but she wasn’t really getting worse either. We were frozen between wanting to have hope and wondering when the other shoe would drop. Lift.

The diamond shape should be getting thinner and thinner. Now you will notice there are two pieces on the bottom half that walk like legs. Fold those in corner to center as before, on each side. Then fold them up and press so they stay that way. My mom went to visit her in Seattle for a week. This was when things had started to go downhill. Every day her goal was to have enough strength to take a walk down the hall from her room and back. And she kept it up for a while. She told my mom to tell us to pray that she could do at least that. And I prayed so hard. But it only went so far. She eventually had to give it up. Just one more thing taken away. Press.

Take one leg down at a time. Take the first leg and open the outside fold. It opens like a book. Lift the leg up, tuck it into the book fold, and close it. Repeat on the other leg. Now the crane is nearly complete. There’s just one more thing you have to do. It only took 5 months for her to get to this point. I saw more pictures on Facebook. She was lying in a hospital bed. Her eyes looked dim, lacking that familiar sparkle. Her mouth was parted but it didn’t look like she was trying to say anything. It was just agape, like she was too weary to tighten her jaw anymore. Even the picture made her look frail. If you could see sounds, this image would be a whisper. Barely audible over the silent victory cry of her disease, warning us the end was near. Close.

The last step is to fold down the wings, and bend one of the sides into a head. And there you have it. What started as a gum wrapper or a Kleenex or a pamphlet is now a bird of your creation. Poised to spread its wings at any moment and leave everything else behind. It was January. A light snowfall was drifting to the earth in the dark. We all sat at the table in silence, wondering when it would come. The call that would overturn the silence into quiet sobs. She held on for as long as she could. But the phone did ring. And she left. Fly away.

I couldn’t tell you why these things happen. I couldn’t explain to you why they’re supposed to happen. But I could tell you that every fold has a purpose. And I could tell you that when you take away the crane’s legs, it gets wings. And I could tell you that if you unfold the entire paper, it remains crumpled but still whole.