today (on the other side)

this week was a week of endings and goodbyes.

this week the kids finished school, zoe graduated from ambrosoli, and we had that beautiful, painful ending assembly full of love and tears and that song 'Sing' that kills me- it was not pretty- it was full of the ugly cry.  because goodbyes. are. just. hard. and kind of awful. because i grow into people and places and separating from them hurts.

this week my kids are preparing to go back to the US with mike.  and now this week has become tomorrow.  they leave tomorrow.  they go back to family and friends and all the things i've begun to think about and sort of miss and definitely romanticize.

but then i got a beautiful reminder from the other side. a reminder from my old friend and neighbor, that there are no easy or hard choices. there is only our lives, and us doing the best we can in those lives and sharing them.

so i'm going to take this beautiful reminder (her words) and share it with you:

Today I am flying away to a simpler place.
Today I am leaving my practice where I want to take care of simple problems
But my university does not get paid when I do that
Today I want to just be a doctor

Today I want to forego a sterile field when I treat an abscess
Just for today, I don’t want to pay malpractice insurance.
Today I want to walk away from a woman my age who slurs her words
From a brain pickled by alcohol
Whose belly is full of ascites
Whose insides are bleeding and draining her to death
Who can’t have a ten dollar procedure because
she can’t scrape together the thousands of dollars required to receive care in a shiny, cool, spacious temple of healing
when what she needs is a cold hard knife and a gentle hand
but you need more than 2 nickels to rub together to get that here.

Today I would like to see my children run with abandon through the dust.
I would like to see my daughter love her one moo cow with all her heart
I would like to see her scrape her knee and bounce back up.
I would like to see my son’s hair turn blond in the sun and his face dirty with real dirt.
I would like to see him kick a ball for fun because there is no DSIII.

Sometimes I need to fly away, across the sea.
To a simpler place, where technology does not accost us daily and where we really connect with the world.
To a simple place, where we learn that the world doesn’t stop when the electricity goes out.
Sometimes I need to indulge in that flight of fantasy
Because this comfort requires constant care and drudgery
Because I am not allowed my own priorities.

Sometimes I need to fly away
To see a friend who faces a different reality
I would bring her a bottle of cold white wine and an arugula salad
Just with lemon and olive oil and parmesan cheese.
A crusty loaf of bread would make it all perfect.
And we would compare our stories
After a while we would know that we have each made our choices,
And that neither has been more noble nor more greedy
Than the other.
We would watch our children play again.
We would sing old songs and make up new ones and dance in the dusk.
And, finally, we would return each to our own reality with a sigh
And a new appreciation for what we have.
And, not least, a renewed connection across that wide ocean.

right.

a reminder that electricity and sterile abscess drainage cost us more than money.  that red dirt and potholes give a freedom that can be quickly forgotten. but most of all that we are all the same.  two eyes, a nose and a mouth.  a heart. a soul.  a desire to know and be known.  a desire to love and be loved. to know meaning and to have meaning and to reach each other. what a beautiful story our lives are, where ever they are lived.  how amazing. how blessed.

a quiet morning

it's early morning, the light is just coming, and it's raining.  the house is quiet.  zoe is away on a school trip, the boys just left for school and rose is still asleep.  i am outside on this porch to begin my day in stillness.  to let the softness of this rain, the slowly emerging sun, the bird songs, the spirit of our living God, fall on me.  to say 'help' in whatever comes my way. to say 'i can't do it alone'.  to say 'please' and 'thanks' and 'forgive me'. 

it's good to have quiet- but it's so unnatural for me in my life these days.  zoe went away yesterday and returns tomorrow. i must admit it was a nice break last night to have only 3 kids and to have the most vocal and opinionated one, absent, but already, i do miss her energy.  

when i dropped her off at school she was anxious to hear what the other kids would think of her newly braided hair.  she was excited but also nervous.  when we got to school several girls were already there in the class and zoe's hair quickly became the topic of conversation.  they said it was different and they liked it, but also they liked it the other way.  she kept asking- so what do you really think of my hair?  - do you really like it? i could tell her slight confusion was appropriate- she was struggling to decipher the subtleties of what was being said. the tone of voice with the words, the faces with the tones.  that was why she was asking again- she really was trying to get it.  ouch.

again it made me realize how incredibly brave she is.  how she is so much braver than most people that i know.  how she is so much braver than i.  because she enthusiastically forges ahead in a very confusing world.  she jumps into situations that most of us would flee from.  she wants to go to all the birthday parties, to all the school events, on all the field trips- even though they are exhausting and challenging and often complicated to understand.  i don't know how i would do in zoe's life.  i like to think that i'd push myself and strive hard to overcome - but likely it would be over the physical challenges - opening the ketchup bottle and pushing until i got the monkey bars down.  i doubt that i'd take on the really hard stuff- that of social rejection.  no, i wouldn't be so brave. 

as the rain stops and the sky is brightening and i can hear the soft steps of rose approaching- i will pray for zoe. for her stillness- away for three days and two nights- for her strength.  i will say 'please- watch over and protect her little heart'. i will say 'thank you for her brave soul'.  i will say 'forgive me for not seeing that always'.

tasting it twice

yikes.

i haven't been here in a while.  as we say in uganda,  'i have been lost'.  and i have.  i have lost my voice - not the one that comes from my mouth- but my voice. i have been so lost.  and when this happens- when silence then begets silence- i begin to go into my head and think that i have nothing to say. at. all.  i begin to wonder why i ever thought i did have something to say. and i begin to be pretty sure that i'll never have anything to say again.  if i do start to write, i stop quickly. i have drafts.  i have snippets.  i have idea fragments. so i just stop trying.  i avoid.  i distract (which is really easy.. like looking at online shoes, and reading the people website).

then last night a friend sent me a message.  "don't forget to keep writing. and breathing. just felt like sending you a little reminder." she must have listened to that still small voice. remind her. how connected we all really are.  how we can help each other along on our paths.  how we can give support - when we are listening and responding.

so here i am gabi.  here i am trying.  here i am feeling at the end of a long season, about to have a respite. soon to reconnect with people who i have longed for- for two years. i think that is part of why i have been lost.  because i'm tired.  because i sometimes need the people who have known me almost always, to remind me of myself, of who i am and who i'm not, and what i'm doing.

the other day i called the US to make some doctors appointments for when we are home.  there was something in hearing those so familiar but so far off southern accents that unlocked me.  i found myself remembering the waiting rooms of offices, the long shadows on the sidewalks in front of us as zoe and i walked to the orthodontist, and then to piano lessons, and to the market.  i remembered the light, the dryness of the air in the fall, the smell of leaves on the ground, the cleanness, the finished-ness, the order, the roads.  i remembered the systems, the options, the availability of everything. 

i remembered our life in the US two years ago. i remembered zoe and where she was and how consumed i was by her, and how she is the reason that i found this voice in the first place.  because i needed to speak it.  i needed to taste it a second time, to understand the first time better.  i needed to unravel our story, i needed to untangle and find myself again- apart from her. 

but.  that is what lifetimes are for- the continued untangling- the voice finding- the understanding.  the tasting. 

yes.

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anaïs Nin

because it's so sweet.
(thank you gabi.xo)

the rains have come

the rain has arrived. after months it seems of dry and heat and dust- this welcome dark quiet has blown in to cool and settle things.  i need this. i need this change.  i need it now.

something happens when the days all look the same and the trees and the flowers and the sky. it's easy to become lost and timeless. it's part of the swallowing.  maybe this is only true for those of us who grew up with seasons and change - where we could engage with the outside to manage and shape our inside.

today in this coolness, in my scarf, listening to the softness of the rain, i see how much i miss this.  i feel like i've been summonsed inside the house, to make tea, to stop and to be here.  to close my eyes, but also to open them, and to remember things and what things mean.

this quiet white sky blankets out the daily distractions, like night, an imposed limitation, and i am somehow able to be still- finally- to be still.

last month the celtic book of prayer had daily readings from anne morrow lindberg's 'gifts from the sea', a book i love and will re-read through out my life, especially in seasons of remembering.

"But I want first of all- in fact, as an end to these other desires- to be at peace with myself.  I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can, I want, in fact- to borrow from the language of the saints- to live "in grace" as much of the time as possible. I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense. By grace, I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony."

there is my problem.  i'm grappling.  i'm needing and begging the outward harmony to come and bring my inward harmony.  i'm wanting this cool rain, these dark clouds, to redirect me.  i'm hoping to hold on to some stillness.  what i really need is to sit still. what i really need is to carve out solitude.  to schedule in the internal white sky.  to practice meditation.  to be open in prayer.  to give in, give up, and embrace the grace that awaits. 

i'm so bad at this. especially in the sun and the hot and the dust.  i get busy and excited and distracted and i forget to focus on the singleness of eye and the central core and of slowing it all down and living in the grace.

sometimes it takes a good rain, and hours of a darkened sky to return.  to remember.  God is found in the whispers, in the softness, in the quiet, in the stillness- oh to live in this place!

the little gray tank top

i'm not sure where i am but i sure haven't been showing up here.  and i need to.

i need to go back to that place of stopping at the end of my day and thinking back on it.  of allowing that space and claiming it.  i need to because with out it, a part of me is lost. lost in the bustle.  lost in the things and the people and the stories that should really be shared.

have i written about clinic? or the all day graduation from 'farming Gods way' that i attended? or my kids growing up more each day? or my thoughts on the facebook circulating repost of a new york times article on sticking together in marriage after 20 years despite the hard stuff?

no. i haven't. because all i can seem to get my mind around these days is most of my family leaving for their visit back to the US in two and a half weeks, and my long three weeks with out them, and then my leaving rose here when i join them.  so in preparation for their leaving- i went to awiino, the massive open air market in downtown kampala, to get some things they would need and i knew i could get cheaper here.  a bathing suit for mike.  shorts for jude. a skirt for me to wear to work.

awiino.   a picture would be worth a thousand words. but i don't have one.  it's what feels like miles of maze like paths lined with used clothes and shoes.  the path is made of dirt, sometimes with planks of wood put down to cover over "water" (or something wet).  the stalls are tiny, like a three sided display panel lined with clothes, there is some tarp-like "roof" over most of it, i think.  in the stalls people are lying down, sometimes sleeping, sometimes eating large bowls of matoke and g-nut sauce, and when i walk past they usually grab me or at least shout out "muzungu how are you?" or "muzungu- you come." i like going to the back area where the clothes and shoes have yet to be sorted.  they are just in piles on the ground or on a table and you can pick through them with out much interruption from the pile owner.  i like it because this is the place for the real bargains.

today i was flipping through this lady's pile.  she was sitting down next to it with her baby on her lap and she started to hand me different shirts to look at.  "how much?" i asked.  "600"  she replied.

600 ugandan shillings is worth about 25 cents.

what? what a bargain for me! but what is going on with her? there was nothing in that pile that i really liked but how could i leave? i couldn't.  i'd like to say that i stopped shopping and bought her lunch or that i gave her 6000 shillings for her shirt.  or at least that i bought the whole pile, but i didn't.  i gave her 1000, told her to keep the difference, and left. she was happy. 

why that story?  i don't know. it's one little tiny piece in my day.  one moment that spoke to me, maybe only because i'm not sure how i would have felt in that moment 2 years ago.  maybe because it could have had many different endings- (like those books, to see what happens next: turn to page 61 if you just walk away with out buying anything, turn to page 85 if you give her a 100 dollar bill...etc)  and who knows what would have been better, but it gave me pause about the little choices that we make all. day. long. and the impact or potential impact we have on each others lives.

sometimes it's the small things that might matter most.  maybe the extra 400 shillings showed enough care and humanization, with out the almost insulting flash of wealth i could have bestowed.  perhaps paying 10X what she asked would have created a greater divide between us- two women, two mothers.  or maybe not.  i don't know.  but this seemed like a reasonable exchange.

and when i got home i tried on the little gray tank top.  it's really beautiful. and what's more, it will remind me of those moments- those times- when we do our best to love each other, to support each others dignity, to lessen the great divide, and to remember that in the big picture, the divide really isn't so big.

it's another poem.. it's what i've got

Walking To Oak-Head Pond, And Thinking Of The Ponds I Will Visit In The Next Days And Weeks
By Mary Oliver

What is so utterly invisible
as tomorrow?
Not love,
not the wind,

not the inside of a stone.
Not anything.
And yet, how often I’m fooled—
I’m wading along

in the sunlight—
and I’m sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining
days ahead—
I can see the light spilling

like a shower of meteors
into next week’s trees,
and I plan to be there soon—
and, so far, I am

just that lucky,
my legs splashing
over the edge of darkness,
my heart on fire.

I don’t know where
such certainty comes from—
the brave flesh
or the theater of the mind—

but if I had to guess
I would say that only
what the soul is supposed to be
could send us forth

with such cheer
as even the leaf must wear
as it unfurls
its fragrant body, and shines

against the hard possibility of stoppage—
which, day after day,
before such brisk, corpuscular belief,
shudders, and gives way.

enough and ready to begin

in three weeks, mike and the three big kids, leave for the US.  we will pull out those big old suitcase/duffel bag things we haven't seen in two years, and pack a few things and a bunch of gifts and off they'll go.

in six weeks i will join them.  i am so ready.

someone told me that when you actually book your tickets, when 'home' is in sight, when it moves into the realm of almost tangible, things here can start to annoy you.  the small things that add up and have to be overlooked for survival purposes, start to have an awful glare that blinds you. she was right.  when we booked our tickets last month, the things that bothered me when we first moved here, which rapidly became 'normal', bothered me again.  bad traffic and bad drivers, littering, losing power during dinner, everyone asking me for school fees, potholes, the pervasive lack.  but now, i'm back to those things being normal. now i'm just getting so excited. 

now i'm allowing all the things i've missed or longed for, things i'd shoved back into my brain and stored, for survival purposes, to come blossoming forward.  a scrumptious cheese board and lomo from the krog bar with a cold cold glass of white wine on a hot summer night.  a loud, hard core southern thunderstorm when the wind turns cold and the sky takes over and quiets us.  oysters from hogg island in the pacific northwest.  the sweet smell of california grasses and eucalyptus trees.  THE OCEAN in it's fullness and magnitude and power and ability to shrink me back to nothing.

i'm ready because i need to be placed.  i need to be reminded. i need to be deafened by the hard rain.  i need to run through golden gate park, inhale the eucalyptus and go back in time to when i pushed my babies there.  i need to hike the ochre hills of the marin headlands. i need to climb mount tam and see the beautiful city across the bay.  i need to feel the waves on my feet and the sand under me and i need to breathe it all into my heart and be filled and rested and i need to spend hours with my 40 something girl friends who have known me forever and still love me even though i've moved across the world.

this is where i am. 

last night i was at another "night of encouragement".  it was a dinner and time of fellowship for missionary women living in uganda.  we ate and introduced ourselves and sang and got into small groups and prayed for each other - for whatever is hard, and whatever is good, and whatever is needed. i didn't mean to but i think i hogged the time in our group. trying to find an aide for zoe for next year, roses adoption challenges, going home in shifts, starting at clinic, fundraising.  but.  what i remembered while we prayed is that GOD IS BIG and what's even better is that GOD CARES about even really little people like me and even about problems that seem gianormous to me but are not much for a big God.  during the singing part of the evening there was a pause and the leader asked us to close our eyes and think of all the adjectives to describe God and then to say them out loud.  there were so many words.  they were all good.  they were all the things we need.  LOVE, FIRM FOUNDATION, FATHER, KINDNESS, FORGIVENESS, CREATOR, HOLY ONE, PROTECTOR, CORNERSTONE, FRIEND, PEACE, GENTLENESS, THE ONE WHO NEVER LEAVES US, FAITHFUL. and on and on.

i sat quietly.  i didn't shout out a word, but what kept circling around in my head was ENOUGH.  what kept running ticker tape through my mind was, ALL I REALLY NEED.

i think she did this so we'd remember. i think hearing from other women who know God and have done crazy things like move across oceans to be Her hands and feet, means something.  i think she knew we needed to be reminded of who God is, so that we can hope and breathe and rest in that.  so that our challenges can shrink back to the place they should have in our lives and our joy can bloom.  because all the things God is, He wants us to experience and know and share. 

the woman who prayed for me reminded me.  the person who will be zoe's aide next year is already picked out, i just need to find her.  it's divinely orchestrated.  rose's life and place in our family has already been decided, i just don't know what it looks like exactly.  but it's the perfect plan. my jumbled summer is just as it should be, even if i don't know why. 

and that is why i can say God is enough.  that is what i can hold on to when the ocean is far away and so are the oysters and good cheese and old friends and golden hills of dried grass and wildflowers. that is what i can hold on to when i grow tired of red dust and potholes and broken. 

but i'm so very thankful that in the middle of God being enough, i get to go home and rest and get ready to begin, again.



I'm ready to begin  
I went on the search for something real I traded what I know for how I feel  
But the ceiling and the walls collapsed  
Upon the darkness I was trapped  
And as the last of breath was drawn from me  
The light broke in and brought me to my feet 

There's no fortune at the end of the road  
That has no end  
There's no returning to the spoils  
Once you've spoiled the thought of them 
There's no falling back to sleep 
Once you've waken from the dream  
Now I'm rested and I'm ready 
I'm rested and I'm ready  
Yeah I'm rested and I'm ready 
I'm rested and I'm ready  
Yeah I'm rested and I'm ready  
I'm rested and I'm ready to begin 
I'm ready to begin
                                        avett brothers, february seven

today (in my mind)

today i'm closing my eyes.
today i'm on my back porch in atlanta. 
today those giant old water oaks are sheltering me and their leaves are waving and the light is making patterns that make everything okay. 
today i'm small and underneath big things like sky and tree and moon and sun. 
today i'm back in a place i left long ago and long for. 
today my kids are younger and making forts while i write. 
today i'm listening to brandi carlise on pandora.
today their is no poverty. today their is no red dust and no crappy roads and no one i don't know, needs anything. 
today no one is asking me for help. 
today no one is saying fine when they are not fine. 
today i'm just siting on wicker furniture and one of my friends is coming over with her kids and they will play and we will talk in regular american english and drink cold white wine. 
today noggin will be the background noise in my life not tropical birds and bodas.
today i might turn the sprinkler on and the kids can get all wet which is fine because today i have a working dryer.  today i don't need to worry about mango fly larvae from drying things outside.
today my kids are running barefoot and i don't need to worry about de-worming them.

enough.

but sometimes i need to go there.  i need to go back.  i need to allow myself to indulge the self-pity that can emerge from the hard parts of being here.  sometimes i need to travel in my head to another far away life that i once lived.  but then i need to travel back to my life now. here. because this is real and my kids just drove in from school.  because i need to make dinner and get the laundry off the line.  because i need to go bring someone some medicine and someone else vegetables, and  see someones pig as promised. and i need to be a mom to those kids who might want to build forts here or play in the hose. 

today, here, brandi carlise is playing and today that is enough.
today, here, the mango trees are waving their leaves and making patterns with sunlight.
today, here, i am small and still underneath big things like sky and tree and moon and sun.