Seventeen Reasons to Never Stop Folding

I was nine years old when my aunt died. She was the most amazing woman, and yes, I realise that I’m probably a little biased. It’s true, I loved her something chronic, and not a day goes by that I don’t still think of her and wonder what might have been. Each time her memory comes to me, I try to reach back in time and tell my child-self that it wasn’t my fault. I don’t listen though, I’m too busy meticulously folding little squares of paper into origami cranes, desperately trying to reach that magical target of one thousand. See, I lived in Japan back then, and there’s a Japanese legend that promises a wish of good health will be granted to the recipient of such a hoard of paper birds. It wasn’t just me; my older sister and our parents were at it too. And when the phone call inevitably came to deliver the devastating news, we had made it all the way to nine hundred and eighty-three.

I had never really experienced grief before, having been extremely young when my grandparents passed away. Sure, I had seen tears streaming down my mother’s face when her best friend died a few years earlier, but I didn’t really understand them. Then winter turned to spring to summer to fall and then back to winter again. As more and more time passed, I had to accept that my aunt was truly gone.

She was a thrifty woman, my aunt. She always managed to make amazing things out of not very much at all, and I remember being in awe of her talents. Long before ‘upcycling’ was ever a mainstream thing, my aunt was a crafting queen. She liked antiques too though – she didn’t discriminate, not in terms of furniture and certainly not in terms of people. She was the most warm and welcoming woman in the world, no matter who you were or where you came from. Some people thought her loyalty and kindness were flaws, but they were my favourite things about her. I’d like to think I’m like her in a lot of ways – I’m scatty like she was, a little naughty sometimes too, but I also genuinely care about other people. I want them to be and do well. I couldn’t save my aunt, but I could continue on with my crane folding mission and save someone else.

So began the hobby of a lifetime.

I started to make cranes whenever the thought occurred to me, no matter where I was or who I was with. This didn’t happen every day, not even every week or month, but slowly, surely, over the years that followed, I turned my little habit into a honed skill. Other people make cranes I know, but mine were different. Thing is, I refused to buy origami paper, that would have been too easy, too clinical. Since my craft was more organic in its purpose, I chose to use the materials I found around me instead. I’ve made cranes out of silk napkins, bubble-gum wrappers, magazine pages and tinfoil, to name just a few. Pretty much anything can be cut into squares you know. Of course, not everything can be folded and manipulated into a crane, but you never know unless you try. I’ve even painstakingly folded toilet paper, in all its fragile glory – it was 2020 last year after all.

I don’t keep them, the cranes, not all of them anyway. I have a pink shoebox under the foot of my bed where I store the ones I make for myself, the ones that keep my fingers dextrous and my mind calm. Mental health is so important and these days it’s totally acceptable to do whatever it takes to keep the pills at bay. Some people have yoga, meditation, running, sex. I have origami cranes.

If you’ve ever hung out with me for more than a couple of hours, chances are I will have made you one. Sometimes I make them for people I don’t even know at all, as was the case for the woman I gave one to on the subway the other day. She looked sad – there were tears in her eyes which matched the fear mongering tales of morbid monstrosities in the paper I was reading. She didn’t have a paper. Since I’ve always liked the idea of finding beauty in the ugly, I ripped out a square of black and white and began to fold. Honestly, I was a little nervous when I handed it to her – you never quite know how people will react. But the wide and bright smile she gave me put me straight at ease. She felt seen, cared for, and I knew I had done the right thing.

I must’ve given away hundreds of cranes throughout my life. Maybe thousands. And that’s the point. Somewhere, at some time, I gave someone the thousandth crane I’d ever made. I like to think the legend honoured them, though neither they, nor I, could ever know. Then it starts again: one crane, two cranes, three, and on and on until the thousandth crane is once again made and given away, secretly instilled with magic and my aunt’s blessing.

My aunt visits me in my dreams sometimes. They are the best nights. She tells me stories of heaven and hell – yes, she’s visited both she says, the music’s a damn sight better down there after all – and I tell her all about everything she’s been missing since she left us. I always wake up in the middle of those nights, well before the crack of dawn, and spend the hours before the rest of the world rises folding. Because I know she’s gone, my aunt, but she’s not really; her infectious positivity soars on the wings of every single crane I create.