Paper cranes and coffee cups

I learned how to fold the traditional paper crane when I was a teenager, from a guy I met at a random summer camp. It caught my attention because I had once seen a cartoon telling the story of 1000 paper cranes. Folding the cranes became something I would do to keep from being bored, and I gradually forgot about it.

Then COVID comes along and we're all under house arrest.

As Lisbon starts to ease restrictions, I start going out to a small café on my street. A tiny place with a dozen seats and a single barista handling the shop. The whole downtown was seeing this happening. Small businesses trying to follow restrictions and pay the bills, and all of us going insane from cabin fever and the pressures of remote working.

This small place was perfect for me. Close by, mostly empty, and being around someone kept me from feeling alone. And I started learning about other places that were just as nice to be at.

But something didn't feel right. It's great to sit at a café and work from there, as every digital nomad will testify. It can also kill a small business if you take up a table and all you get is an espresso.

So I would try not to overstay, and for some reason, I remembered the paper cranes. It felt like a good way to show appreciation for the people. So I folded one. And another, and then a few more.

I know this feels banal. But it made me feel a little bit better for taking advantage of the place. I would also share an Instagram story in hopes of driving more people to these places.

You're the origami guy!

The enthusiastic call caught me off guard when I was folding one more. It was a barista who had found some cranes and took them home.

It was fun to just leave the cranes lying around and find out that people had found them and posted on Instagram.

Can you fold other things?

Yes, I had learned how to read the diagrams from a website back in the 90s. I know a few of them by heart, like flowers and little dragons.

You should make a T-Rex!

That was the hardest origami I have done so far.

The cranes are simple enough to fold with my eyes closed, and from them I learned a few tricks.

1. Never make the folds too precise. The paper will need to drift a bit, and if the fold is too tight, it just turns out weird. The more I tried to make it perfect, the worse it looked.
2. Pick the colour that stands out in the environment. Things and people that blend into the background don't make memories.
3. Start before it's perfect. People value the effort more than the result.

You most have folded hundreds.

More than a thousand. I kept buying the same packs from Amazon, each with 200 sheets. People would sometimes ask for one so they could learn, and I would explain that I couldn't because it was the only way I could keep track of the count. They looked at me funny.

I reached the goal, and as the story goes, I made my wish. "I want to walk again. I want to get rid of MS and go back to being the person I was."

A lot has happened between this time and now. I changed medications, I tried to find some promising herbal formulas from eastern medicine, tried phytotherapies that had shown signs to help; I managed to get the autologous haemopoietic stem cell transplant to try to halt the disease.

Through it all, folding the paper cranes was a way to show appreciation for the doctors and nurses, some of whom saw the worst side of me.

I didn't get my wish and still feel myself getting worse. Each good day comes back a little less better than the previous. Gradually, each step is just a little bit harder. I grumbled when I had to buy a cane from Amazon. I cried at night when I had to ask for a wheelchair. Punching walls and tables didn't help, hugging friends didn't take away the dread. Even teaching became harder, and during a time, it was even less enjoyable.

Sometimes I still fold a crane or two, and I will teach anyone who wants to learn. But keeping count doesn't make sense anymore, nor does the hope of a magical wish coming true.

When we're hit by something so strong, be it whatever it is, we can never go back to who we were. What hurts me now is that after COVID and a thousand cranes, I still feel back to the start. Confined at home, with little I can do to take charge and change my fate.

But sometimes I still fold a crane.