Gritting my teeth through my second papercut of the day, I force my fingers to stay in motion, deftly executing triangular folds on smooth yellow paper. After flattening the wings, my hundredth paper crane of the day is complete. Without time to spare, I toss it into my purple lunchbox and begin folding the next crane.
Since the beginning of the school year, my friends and I—bastions of the Origami Club—have been tirelessly working towards a seemingly unattainable goal: folding more than 12,000 cranes to gift every graduating senior a paper crane lei at graduation. The journey, filled with mass paper orders, papercuts, and exhaustion, has taken over my life as I take any spare moment to fold.
Boxes of black and yellow cranes fill up my closet space; but even though I expected the task to be overwhelming and torturous, I’ve found it to be surprisingly rewarding. With every triangular fold, I find a sense of peace; throughout a time of great change in my life, the cranes have become my stable constant. Beyond this, the cranes have given me an outlet to make connections with my community..
Subjected to the inescapable slew of college applications, my winter months were spent in a constant state of stress. Beyond just academic stressors, I had a quota of cranes to fold, which only amplified the strain I felt. In that moment, the thought of folding cranes felt like a chore, and twelve thousand cranes sounded unreachable. But amidst the cacophony of busyness, I pulled out a sheet of paper and began to fold.
When my hands are on the origami paper, mental tallies of cranes and paper and leis all fade away. In that moment, I am simply a pair of hands folding a crane. My mind, typically preoccupied with an onslaught of academic, family, and social obligations, is forced to quiet as my focus narrows into the triangular folds of a wing. I revel in this quiet as the sound of crinkling paper. Even though I should have been overwhelmed, the gentleness of each fold provided me a sense of calm. It gave me an opportunity to breathe. After all, you can’t write essays when you are folding cranes.
Soon, the cranes became a guilty pleasure. Time in class to work meant time to fold cranes. The purple lunchbox where I stored my paper followed me everywhere. As my fingers became accustomed to sheer repetition, I soon gained the ability to fold one in under a minute.
Even today, when I hold origami paper in my hands, a sense of indescribable calm washes over me. Folding cranes has become my way of combating what once overwhelmed me: academics, college applications, extracurricular activities.
But the constance of folding cranes is not the only thing I’ve gained. On weekends, my friends and I run crane marathon sessions where we fold and string hundreds of leis, punctuated by TV shows, inside jokes, and endless laughter. At school, the cranes have become a common conversation starter. When someone asks why I’m folding, I offer them a piece of paper to join in. It fills me with joy to watch others carefully fold paper alongside me. I revel in every creased brow, every fumbling fold, and every triumphant smile that the cranes elicit from those around me. The paper cranes have given me an opportunity to foster and deepen the connections I have with my community. The true constant I’ve gained through this is the constant of friendship.
I don’t fold alone anymore. Just as the cranes started as a project to uplift our community, I’ve felt uplifted as I fold alongside others. When I see my mom folding cranes as she watches her reality TV, or my sister folding in between reading textbook pages for her AP World History class, I’m reminded that the relationships I’ve been able to make is the cornerstone of this project.
As I continue to fold (perhaps at an unhealthy pace), I don’t forget the purpose of the crane leis: celebration. Every fold goes toward the graduation ceremony—my chance to celebrate the little and large victories my graduating class has had throughout our four-year high school career. With every crane I complete, every little victory I recognize, I hope the seniors will be able to see their own journeys in the leis that they receive. I hope they find the slightly misaligned wings and deformed heads as evidence of the wonderful community they are in. This is who we are: we celebrate each other.
