the taste of this milky african tea is bringing me right back to kenya. to being 17. to where i will be soon. to that great drop off into the rift valley, golden and dotted with those thin fanned acacia trees. to expanse and wild and extreme and foreign. to the voice of a place that landed me here- and i wonder why i now feel so complete- completely complete. i'm thinking about how perfect it is to be going back for the first time with my dad who brought me there and in whose footsteps i've walked.
but it wasn't always that way. at 17 i was a senior in high school, waiting for college acceptance letters and dating a boy my parents hated. a boy who i loved, but knew was temporary, who had long hair and smoked cigarettes and had been kicked out of private school and landed in a rehab, then landed in our small town where he went to AA meetings, listened to the grateful dead and made tie-dyed t-shirts that said 'make love, not war.' in fairness, they didn't hate him, that hated that he was dating their daughter.
right before i'd left for africa, he'd been expelled from our school for swearing loudly at the prinicpal, in front of several classrooms who'd come out to see the commotion which had begun with him swearing at me. it was icky, we'd broken up, but were still somehow, probably pathologically, friends. in africa while my dad was teaching, i wandered the tea fields and dreamed about the person who would really hold my heart, and wrote my journal to that boy at home, knowing it wasn't him.
thank God we didn't have blogging back then- it would have been an disaster! really. i still have all my old journals. but we did have cameras.
i wore clothes that i loved but my parents hated. thrift store clothes, skirts that had bells, sparkly gauzy jeannie pants, moccasins with fringe but only leather soles, and beads or lapis lazuli jewelry. instead of perfume, i wore an oil called 'rain', hung tapestries on my wall and burned incense. i my favorite thing was a borrowed pair of my friends mothers madras shorts from when she was in college (20 years old with holes to prove it), and a cut off navy blue t-shirt that had been her dads. vintage with some meaning. this outfit particularly drove my dad crazy as he couldn't understand why, when he was a surgeon making enough money to dress his children well, i insisted on going about town in the used clothes of his college presidential running opponents wife.
all of this of course made no sense to me at 17. at. all. i mean why weren't they happy that i was recycling? or that i wasn't running around in ripped black nylons and shredded t-shirts held together with safety pins and sporting a mohawk, listening to the dead kennedys. why weren't they happy that i was dating the one boy in high school who didn't drink or do drugs? this was the source of many arguments, discussions, and shared annoyance and quite probably prolonged a relationship that might have ended sooner. i could explain his 'good behavior' until the cows came home- but they kept talking about that "look in his eye".
"what look in his eye?"
"that look that lets me know he's seen a lot more of this world than you have."
at which point i'd roll my eyes and say,"i don't know what you're talking about."
but i did.
i knew exactly what they were talking about.
he had seen a lot more of the world- seen it, tasted it, smelled it and felt it. you could see it in his eyes.
our trip to kenya was a month long. i was the longest time i'd ever spent with my dad- especially alone- and perhaps matched the combined time we'd spent together over the four years earlier. so we had some territory to cover. the first 2 or 3 days- which mostly involved airplanes and sleeping off jetlag- was intermixed with arguing over the above mentioned issues. and typical of late teens, and quite honestly my personality, i extrapolated our disconnect over attire and appearances to an existential level about our grand differences in approach to people and life. but my father is a very wise man, and thankfully, we moved on, agreed that we loved each other and must have come to some resolution/compromise about how i was to dress on this trip because in photos i'm usually wearing a polo shirt (his taste), but with the infamous madras shorts.
so in a few days, i'll stand with my dad, where he was at my age- teaching medicine in africa together. but it also would seem appropriate for us to give a talk on parents and children and time. on 24 years. on trusting the process.
on that trip i found out i'd been accepted to college- the college where the owner of the cut off blue t-shirt would be president, with his wife, the original owner of those madras shorts. the college where i would meet the man i dreamed about in those tea fields. the man who had walked those kenyan tea fields a few years before me, wondering who would hold his heart. the man who still holds mine, and who embraces my drama and extrapolations (as evidenced by most famous mike quote, "but mountains are so much more beautiful than molehills!) the man who loved the smell of 'rain' but hated the grateful dead, who listened to the clash, and had long hair, but a different look in his eye. a man my parents loved too. a man i would return to africa with, after years together of tapestry covered walls and graduate schools, and medical residency and babies.
24 years.
trust the process.
but it wasn't always that way. at 17 i was a senior in high school, waiting for college acceptance letters and dating a boy my parents hated. a boy who i loved, but knew was temporary, who had long hair and smoked cigarettes and had been kicked out of private school and landed in a rehab, then landed in our small town where he went to AA meetings, listened to the grateful dead and made tie-dyed t-shirts that said 'make love, not war.' in fairness, they didn't hate him, that hated that he was dating their daughter.
right before i'd left for africa, he'd been expelled from our school for swearing loudly at the prinicpal, in front of several classrooms who'd come out to see the commotion which had begun with him swearing at me. it was icky, we'd broken up, but were still somehow, probably pathologically, friends. in africa while my dad was teaching, i wandered the tea fields and dreamed about the person who would really hold my heart, and wrote my journal to that boy at home, knowing it wasn't him.
thank God we didn't have blogging back then- it would have been an disaster! really. i still have all my old journals. but we did have cameras.
i wore clothes that i loved but my parents hated. thrift store clothes, skirts that had bells, sparkly gauzy jeannie pants, moccasins with fringe but only leather soles, and beads or lapis lazuli jewelry. instead of perfume, i wore an oil called 'rain', hung tapestries on my wall and burned incense. i my favorite thing was a borrowed pair of my friends mothers madras shorts from when she was in college (20 years old with holes to prove it), and a cut off navy blue t-shirt that had been her dads. vintage with some meaning. this outfit particularly drove my dad crazy as he couldn't understand why, when he was a surgeon making enough money to dress his children well, i insisted on going about town in the used clothes of his college presidential running opponents wife.
all of this of course made no sense to me at 17. at. all. i mean why weren't they happy that i was recycling? or that i wasn't running around in ripped black nylons and shredded t-shirts held together with safety pins and sporting a mohawk, listening to the dead kennedys. why weren't they happy that i was dating the one boy in high school who didn't drink or do drugs? this was the source of many arguments, discussions, and shared annoyance and quite probably prolonged a relationship that might have ended sooner. i could explain his 'good behavior' until the cows came home- but they kept talking about that "look in his eye".
"what look in his eye?"
"that look that lets me know he's seen a lot more of this world than you have."
at which point i'd roll my eyes and say,"i don't know what you're talking about."
but i did.
i knew exactly what they were talking about.
he had seen a lot more of the world- seen it, tasted it, smelled it and felt it. you could see it in his eyes.
our trip to kenya was a month long. i was the longest time i'd ever spent with my dad- especially alone- and perhaps matched the combined time we'd spent together over the four years earlier. so we had some territory to cover. the first 2 or 3 days- which mostly involved airplanes and sleeping off jetlag- was intermixed with arguing over the above mentioned issues. and typical of late teens, and quite honestly my personality, i extrapolated our disconnect over attire and appearances to an existential level about our grand differences in approach to people and life. but my father is a very wise man, and thankfully, we moved on, agreed that we loved each other and must have come to some resolution/compromise about how i was to dress on this trip because in photos i'm usually wearing a polo shirt (his taste), but with the infamous madras shorts.
so in a few days, i'll stand with my dad, where he was at my age- teaching medicine in africa together. but it also would seem appropriate for us to give a talk on parents and children and time. on 24 years. on trusting the process.
on that trip i found out i'd been accepted to college- the college where the owner of the cut off blue t-shirt would be president, with his wife, the original owner of those madras shorts. the college where i would meet the man i dreamed about in those tea fields. the man who had walked those kenyan tea fields a few years before me, wondering who would hold his heart. the man who still holds mine, and who embraces my drama and extrapolations (as evidenced by most famous mike quote, "but mountains are so much more beautiful than molehills!) the man who loved the smell of 'rain' but hated the grateful dead, who listened to the clash, and had long hair, but a different look in his eye. a man my parents loved too. a man i would return to africa with, after years together of tapestry covered walls and graduate schools, and medical residency and babies.
24 years.
trust the process.
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