the first, on leaving

 i remember it well. this time. 10 years ago. getting ready to move. beginning to to see my life in the US differently, beginning to let it go. there were complicated emotions. a grieving, a nostalgia, a curiosity, anticipation, excitement, some fear. my days felt split between carrying on my routine in atlanta with packing and prepping for a new life 8,000 miles away. newsletters, fundraising, medivac insurance, typhoid vaccines, finding new schools and what essential items couldn't be purchased there. 

i remember the loneliness of it. and that was strange. i suppose it shouldn't have been, no one else was selling their house and cars and getting on a plane for the heart of africa. no one else was leaving grandparents and good health care and 'normal' for an unknown life with 3 little people in tow. yet the loneliness surprised me. 

i'm here again on the other side of 8,000 miles packing up a life i have treasured for 10 years to return to my country of origin. i'm sorting into 'give away', 'sell', bring'. i'm beginning to see my life here differently, beginning to let it go (to loosen my grip). there are complicated emotions. i'm grieving, i'm nostalgic, i'm mostly those, with some fear thrown in. there is some curiosity, i'm trying to grow that, to let God grow it. 

i'm remembering the loneliness that is on this side, but i know will be even more on the other side.

moments

 sometimes i'm so struck by time that i wonder if i'm dying and part of my mind knows it - like a slow version of my life flashing before my eyes- playing back the memories. so vivid. so aware of it's passage. it's the feeling of wanting to grab onto something but it's water running through my hands and i have this helpless awareness that all those moments and milestones have come and gone. they only live there- somewhere in my mind. 

it's almost always related to my children. their little feet come to me when i see their giant ones on the couch now. their little rhymes when i hear deep voices- so deep i wonder who is in my living room? their toe-heads stretching for a taller pencil mark on the wall, now we need a stool to reach that 6 foot 5 1/4 mark. 

time.

life is so exquisitely beautiful. 

how does it just keep going like it does?

10 years ago we were striping down our lives in atlanta. selling the things we owned. ridding ourselves of excess clothes and books and toys, furniture and cars- but so much more than that. we said goodbye to a life and chose another one. we left 'normal' and known.

we entered an adventure. we became outsiders. we joined a community. we had many lessons to learn. little toes were covered in red dirt and callouses and squirrels were replaced by monkeys- OJ became passion juice and for the kids not much mattered other than running free with friends until the sun set at 7.  

the thing about time is in the present you aren't thinking about how it will become the past. we gave them diversity. eyes wide open. ears to hear others in another tongue. perspective. it came at a cost. the cost of knowledge. the cost of 'home' being a confusing word. the cost of belonging to more than one land, and yet nowhere at once. 

when the sky closes herself up like this, white and cloudy, huddled with blue and grey moments, my mind runs through the years. questions rise up. aching. a beautiful ache that i wouldn't change.

nothing has been easy- but it's been real. these 10 years have broken, bled and purified me. 

what crazy times these are- what memories will they become? 

cherish. (to protect and care for lovingly) (hold dear) (to keep in ones mind)

i must cherish this moment. now. this sky with it's creeping light. this song on the radio. the sandy headed boy playing with his dog outside the window forever barefoot. and the bright orange flowers and purple pedals on the creeping vines and the spikey zigzag plants. the lichen covered rocky ground. and yes even the screech of the ibis and the weedwacker. 

i will cherish those feet on the couch before they grow any bigger -

cherish it all because so quickly, it will go.

 

getting closer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i think i finally realized what makes me so bone tired. or maybe it's what i'm so bone tired of. it's having to think extra about every little decision and having to second guess every idea in light of the "new normal" that's what it is. it sucks the joy!

i'd love to have people over tonight. oh wait. is that a good idea? have we seen too many people lately? are we in the same bubble? oh nevermind. (they will have to go through the same exercise on their end).

but then i feel lonely and my brain hurts. 

i just want to sing a christmas carol and have friends for dinner, and not have to hear myself say, "did you remember your mask?" i just don't want to have to think about everything all the time. 

this seems particularly challenging for the more impulsive non-planner types,  because let me tell you, we are having to redo our whole deal. is it easier if you are normally more considerate and organized? probably not. i'm sure it's just as exhausting and disruptive. 

sometimes i stop and look around and think how amazing it is that we are so resilient as a species.  i mean what are our options really. but we go on. we slap on our masks- or many of us do, or we should, and we wash our hands and we go about our work and our lives and try to find food for our families and if we are fortunate enough to be able to continue to educate our kids we do that. hopefully those who can do that and have enough to eat, can also find time to look at the disparity and wonder about it in a more profound and direct way and maybe commit to doing something about it in our own spheres. let's say there is a lot of potential for new years resolutions involving others for 2021. how can we make the world more equitable when we see a virus that doesn't discriminate who it infects given the opportunity, but the outcomes are impacted by social determinants, as is the opportunity for infection in the first place. 

in a few weeks i turn 50. good Lord. this is snapshot of life right now: we just got power back after 3 days in the dark and with no charged devices. i have a borrowed fake christmas tree which is not yet decorated (in 30 years i have always had a real tree by december 1st decorated - including my 10 years in uganda :( ). i have three teenagers full of all things they should be, sweat and stories and complaints and laughter. they are all-knowing and desperately needy simultaneously, someone always has an ice pack, someone else is in the shower,  and someone needs a haircut. they make me laugh louder and longer, and they can push my buttons faster than anyone else. i have a 21 year old who i miss terribly but i also find challenging to talk to on the phone every other day 8000 miles away. i took a kickboxing class on saturday which was awesome and then got a migraine all day. i'm loving teaching the third year medical students here, in the way buechner describes our call. i miss my family in the usa, consistent electric power, and good milk, but i love living in africa. i cried my way through 2 very different zoom memorial services this week, one for a friend who died this summer of cancer, a woman my mothers age who i've known for decades, the grieving was for many things as was the celebration of her beautiful life, lived mostly in east africa, and is part of the reason why i'm here now. the second was an unexpected death of a child who i've never met who shares the name of my child who i almost lost, the child of a friend of a friend. i attended in support and solidarity, to respect both his life and to support their family as the body of Christ had supported me when i thought i might lose my jude. both reminded me again of resilience and of what matters and to be so deeply grateful daily. and of the hope we have in the Love.

so we are getting closer. closer to 2021. to a newer, new normal, which will i believe be better than this one. i have hope in the vaccine and biden and harris and of course Jesus, and time. and Love. 

may we Love better. may i Love better.

advent, finally

 

it is advent. my favorite time. this year it seems we are crawling to the end of the 12th month like a marathon no one signed up for. we are longing for rest and hope and joy and meaning. maybe more than ever before.  

our tradition is to wait until the day after thanksgiving before we can begin to look toward Christmas. this means we wait to watch or listen or decorate. we wait. this year the struggle was real. a few times, i almost gave in and my kids held me up to my word. this year there is a desperation for the things that advent promises.

this year has done us in. laid us bare. flattened us. tested and toughened us. everyone has lost something or someone. there is collective grief. a mourning. 

advent promises us the gift of Love. advent is the season of hope, anticipation of  a celebration, a birth, of joy, of abundance, of divine entrance, of true miracle. LOVE. radical love. 

this year, more than any other i can remember, i am sitting in the need for radical love. and everything about Jesus's birth, life, death and resurrection was radical Love. He spoke radical words that made the establishment mad, He did radical things and hung out with the "wrong people", He turned things upside down - with a clear and simple message- Love one another as I love you. He was inclusive always, He chose people over rules, people over money, forgiveness over judgement, always. period. 

our hope is here. radical Love, inclusive Love no matter what by God. that is the good news of Christmas, the hope of advent.

for me this week, this first week of advent, i'm going to be still in a time of reflection on this year.  this is not my tendency. i like to avoid the negative and skip over the bad feelings and get to the good ones. but as i get older, i'm learning the value of holding hard things, the lessons learned in dark nights of the soul. i'm beginning to brave the cold and experience what is there for me.

i have hung some little white lights (my favorite) and the advent calendar made by my sweet sister and i'm listening to Handel's Messiah while I reflect and sit with the year. the equatorial sun shines and outside it looks and feels like my childhood summers which still seems a bit confusing,

oh come oh come Emmanuel!

wonder

i can hear the thunder, it's about to rain. the sky is a dark blue gray and the leaves are almost yellow in contrast. it's beautiful. it looks like my childhood memories of fall. a timeless, place-less emotion. it doesn't match the sounds of tropical birds that are still chirping warnings of the coming storm. 

a few weeks ago my girl turned 21. that little blonde head, starfish fingered butter-soft hands, years of Wonder, in the blink of an eye. today i read an article written by her childhood crib-mate, neuro-typical best friend who studies at Brown University about managing anxiety during covid-19. tomorrow mike and i will have a transitional meeting about the plans for zoe's future with her developmental disabilities service coordinator and her support staff at school, zoe's anxiety is too high to attend the meeting. how wide the gap is now. and we'll have that meeting via zoom- we in africa 8000 miles away. 

my friend is adopting a wonderful girl with special needs. i'm so often tempted to run to her, to hug her, to ask so many things. are you okay? no really- you can tell me if you're not. tell her that it's okay if you are and you aren't at the same moment because that is where i live. and are you ready? do you know your world is now changed forever? that forever will be bittersweet, but that bittersweet is better because you taste way more flavor when you live in that contrast. the truth is i wouldn't change a bit of it. i wish for zoe life was easier, but i wouldn't change her for a second, she's one of my favorite people.

life is so dang beautiful and hard and intense, isn't it? it's like the sky right now. all the things. all the pieces. singing birds and thunder. car mufflers and neighbor children's laughter. dark clouds and ambient light on yellow leaves. people doing the best they can with what they have, with who they are, moments frozen, time moving. my heart is weeping, my mouth smiling, my eyes are dry. my mind full of Wonder.  

goodbye

there was something about the way the sun caught the "pumped- up pink" toenail polish on my tan feet leaning on the passenger side dashboard that reminded me of when the biggest problem in my life was whether or not to get a perm. we just drove away from dropping zoe back at school and my eyes were blurry with tears.  when did life get so hard? that is what i've been asking God since about 4 am, but really for about the past 18 years. She must be getting tired of me but Love is okay with tired so i keep on asking it.

periodically i have these awakenings to my own life. you would think they are 'ah-ha moments' except that i've probably had the exact one already, but am awakening to it again. it's like i've forgotten and then it's new to me. this happens when i re-watch a movie or TV show also because i often forget the ending and it seems new (which is an advantage- currently rewatching homeland, and it's actually exciting!). at 4 am i was awakening again to the reality that my sweet zoe will never ever be independent and that no one will ever love her like her parents do and this has major implications for my heart and my physical being too.

leaving zoe this time felt different. harder. definitely harder. in six days we fly back to uganda. through a series of miraculous events we are heading back on a repatriation flight. the world is topsy, turvy in a way it never has been before. my 20 year old reality is unchanged. and i'm getting on a plane with what feels like a wing and a prayer.

so at 4 am i found myself at the foot of my bed leaning on the window sill crying out to God. 'why are you making this so hard? you could have blocked this! you could have held our work permits, made the flight full, anything if you wanted us to stay here with her!' you know God speaks to me in the trees and the wind and She did. zoe is my child. I love her even more than you do- I made her. and you. I've got her. I've got you. you need to go. I know it's hard to leave but there are some things I need you to do to be ready for what is next.  the entire row of mighty, tall, maple trees shook with words. and then there was stillness and then i had that moment of awakening.

i went back to sleep.

a few hours later, the Celtic book of prayer had a morning reading that is one of my favorites.
a poem. i heard it as God speaking. a dialogue again, i took it one line at a time.

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart,
but there is so much unresolved. hold these tensions? let them sit? as they are? it's soooo uncomfortable!!

and try to love the questions themselves
"the truest and most beautiful life never promises to be an easy one" love the process

as if they were locked rooms
or books written in a very foreign language.
love the blessing in the challenge of it all.

Do not search for the answers, which could not be given to you now,
stop wasting precious time spinning my tired wheels

because you would not be able to live them.
oh i couldn't live those answers now anyway!

And the point is to live everything.
there are seasons.

Live the questions now.
this is my season.

Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually,
without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
perhaps, (or, gulp, perhaps not). far? (deep breath) it will come naturally, as i grow and change and allow and transform with my life and the people in it....the answers. or maybe different questions.

Rainer Maria Rilke

there was so much in that poem for me today. and in the trees. God speaking in ways that i needed to hear. knowing that my girl is being cared for by the God who made her- reassured of the presence of the Holy Spirit. 

still driving her there i cried a bit behind my sunglasses. i got through the actual goodbye with out tears and she did great. but as we drove away- my heart hurt, as i remembered my awakening at 4am- and i tried to recall the poem, instead of simpler times - and perms are almost always a bad idea anyway.

 

reunion

we picked zoe up from ELC-2 on April 6th and brought her to our temporary home in annisquam where we've found an affordable furnished winter rental to live in while we wait with the rest of the planet for the world to restart. i hadn't seen zoe in over 3 months and i couldn't wait. we'd done all the things- we'd gotten off the plane and quarantined for 2 weeks with out seeing a soul, check our temperatures and kept our hands washed. her school wasn't meeting anymore and there were only a few kids in the residence (ELC-2) so she called us all the time- she was ready too. ready to come 'home' or whatever 'home' looks like to our family which is another blog post for another day.

the traffic was light. i called when we arrived. mike had been back to the states a month before so i asked him if he could step into the back ground and i could have the first hug. i couldn't wait. i speak to zoe every other night in africa. i'm the one who dials her number, who goes out and calls her cat so she can see her, who rallies the siblings, but when she ran out that door at ELC-2 she ran to her dad.
"mom, where's dad?" then seeing him, " DADDY!!" and gave him a huge hug.

not to be overly-dramatic but it felt like dying. dying in the way that you read about when someone has a near death experience and their life passes before their eyes. because in those moments when her staff member looked at me with that bottom-lip-stuck-out look of 'i'm sorry' and i slow-mo'ed a glance to her hug with her dad, i saw all the moments flashing before me. i felt all the feelings- the pain of watching her struggle through the past 20 years, of holding that: the smirks and the non-invites from supposedly open-minded liberal san francisco parents, the giggles and purposeful bullying of her peers, the countless times she has told me her life isn't worth it, the hours i've spent writing it all out so i don't explode. and here. here was this moment. the longest i've been away from her in 20 years. and BOOM slap. it hurt! 

and i know there is all that psychology behind it and that 'punishing the one your closest with' yada-yada, but it didn't change the fact that it felt like a huge punch in the gut. so that was the intro which i guess is good in that there was room for improvement.

i thought i'd be writing a lot. i thought i'd be here, near the water, with time and with my muse (zoe) and i'd be full of words again, but it's a different season. a different season entirely. when i started writing i needed to get through my days. there was still so much to be discovered and uncovered about zoe and her future. i was trying to do that while also trying to accept it, and what it might mean for our family. as the years have unfolded, we have more clarity and a deeper understanding of zoe. we have begun to grasp what her future may look like and in that, to accept it and look at what that means for our family.

i have a house full of teenagers right now- in attitude, habits and hygiene- their age range is 11-20. it's complicated. one wrestles with issues with identity and adoption, one with identity and autism and all that comes with that, 2 that wrestle with third culture kid issues. it's a lot. and then of course there are all my issues! it's a party over here. :) but for zoe, being 'home' means staring what she is not, in the face. it's about confronting her difference 24 hours a day. it's feeling like the oldest and the least able at once. i know it's asking a lot of her- all. the. time.

but there is something about sitting around the dinner table, the 6 of us, that in it's crazy, i love. something about my 4 babies all together, being way too loud, attitudes galore and usually mocking me, but there we are- the model of the imperfect world. hard. not easy. loud, not peaceful. sitting crooked not straight. forgetting our manners, but sharing our stories. laughing even if it's over some stupid simpsons episode rerun. laughing even if everyone doesn't get the joke.  learning that we are different. learning that we are the same. 

like the past 20 years, a beautifully bent but not broken, reunion.