Violet has a new baby sister, whom she decides must be named Mimosa ("because they are two flowers and violet and yellow look beautiful together"). She is very happy, even though she quickly senses that something is wrong. Her father, mother, and grandmothers are acting very strangely. They are angry, sad, crying, staring into nothing, avoiding her, disappearing. So it is through the reactions of the adults that Violet gradually comes to understand her sister's difference. Mimosa is different. But she is also special. Special like a four-leaf clover.
This is the story of a beautiful children's book by Beatrice Masini and Svjetlan Junakovic, My Sister Is a Four-Leaf Clover (2012). Rather than empty rhetoric and grandiose speeches, rather than a muddled mix of personal wish and political correctness, this vivid picture book addresses complex themes—difference and acceptance—with simplicity and calm. It does so through the eyes, the questions, the fears, and the daily experience of a girl who finds herself in the delicate role of being a sister. "I had already figured out on my own that Mimosa was different from other children. But you can't apologize for what you are. You just are."
Closing the book and turning to reality, Mimosa is born in every part of the world, and amid old and new indifference, she continues to be born every day. Not always, though, does she have Violet nearby. Through this column, we want to tell the stories of the Mimosas of yesterday and today—those close by and those far away—through the voice of Violet. We want to immerse ourselves in the eyes and thoughts of each small Violet who, with love and curiosity, watches, meets, and discovers. She discovers herself, Mimosa, their bond, the adults, and the world.
In this first story, Mimosa is born in Mexico City, in a large and desperately poor family. We know nothing of her mother and father—we can only imagine their despair and pain when they realized that this small bundle is a burden too heavy for their fragile shoulders. And so, once again (as has happened so often, far too often, through history), Mimosa is abandoned.
In a terrible place, a place that tells you more than words ever could: on the edge of a garbage dump.
But Mimosa is not completely alone. Violet has followed the adults from a distance and has remained, even from afar, to cradle her youngest sister long after the parents have gone. And so Violet can bear witness to an unexpected happy ending: the child is picked up by the warmth of Sister Ines, a nun who in recent years has devoted herself to "gathering disabled children from the garbage"—abandoned minors from the streets and children left in dumps because they are disabled. According to Father Ángel García, president and founder of the Spanish NGO Mensajeros de la Paz, Sister Ines collects children no one wants, giving many of them her own surname. So far she has collected two hundred.
At the end of 2012, the tireless work of this nun bore new fruit: on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Mensajeros de la Paz's founding, a project was presented to build two new care homes in Metepec, a town north of Mexico City, on four hectares of land donated by the state—one for abandoned disabled children and one for the elderly. Each has forty beds.
Mimosa is safe.
Giulia Galeotti, 2013