Foreigner

Just because you feel called to be somewhere doesn’t mean it’s easy to be there, doesn’t mean your roots don’t tell you every day that the soil you’re in is not your own, that you’ve been transplanted.

There is something incredibly alluring about living in a foreign country. Your senses are in hyperdrive all the time, and you notice things that people who have lived in the place their whole lives do not notice. For example, occasionally throughout the town of San Pedro--in the university, the sports complex, my own lane, or a random street between the heres and theres--every other waft of air I breathe is sweet, similar to yellow sweet corn. I love it. It’s soft and mysterious.

It’s soft because it’s gentle, like the smell of rising bread dough. Mysterious, because nobody else smells it so they can’t tell me what it is. They’ve breathed it their whole lives, are accustomed.

It’s possible it is corn, but I am pretty sure it’s the smell of sugarcane being refined; or maybe it’s the factory by the river that processes beer. I don’t know. I’m American.

I’m American.

I’m a foreigner.

I’ve been transplanted.

When I studied abroad in Italy, I didn’t fit in either, but it was different. Once I got my fashion a little bit more under control people frequently thought I was German; and whether “German” or American, if I kept to myself, often Italians wouldn’t look twice, whether male or female.

But here, even as I speak more and more Spanish, and thereby unlock the house that is culture, the way Khaled Hosseini said it would happen in his book And the Mountains Echoed, I remain a foreigner. It’s my skin, my hair, and--more so--my blue eyes. I do not fit in with the dominant culture, the way Haitians do not fit in either; except their ethnicity, in contrast to mine, gets them very few favors.

I am a foreigner.

It would be lovely, for a few hours, to feel normal. To not feel like all of the cultural parts of me, all of the colors of me, are alien.

But is that my mission in life? Is that what I am pursuing? Is that what I was created for? To feel normal, comfortable, in place, supported, at home?

Like I’ve written before, I feel all those things in the arms of my husband. He is my Knight, my best friend. But we do not live in a fairytale. He goes to work. Sometimes he’s away overnight.

And I am left as who I am without him: a stranger.

I am an exile of Eden, waiting to be able to go home to a city fashioned of precious gems.

We are all foreigners, truth be told. But we feel it more in some seasons of life than others. For me, it’s especially poignant right now because my strangeness is palpable. People treat me differently for how I look, shining the spotlight on me whether to give me positive or negative attention, and my cultural habits are an oddity, whether it be my propensity to prefer text messages over voice messages in WhatsApp (and be terrible at responding to either right away because dang it, if it’s an emergency call me), or my desire to always be on time.

Some days I feel like my entire personhood is in opposition to Dominican culture (“I don’t belong here”) and those are the days when I need to spend a lot of time looking at flowers. Those are the days when I also need to talk to people and remember that our differences are beautiful.

As Riley Armstrong wrote in a song a long, long time ago, it’s what every welcome mat is saying: “welcome,” only welcome, without discrepancy, without asterisks or clauses. It doesn’t matter if you’re different; in fact, different is beautiful. My parents’ welcome mat even says “welcome” in 7 or 10 different languages. Riley would be proud.

I may be a transplanted flower, I may look a little different, and move with the sun a little differently, but that does not mean that how I look or move is inherently wrong. The soil feels different, but I can still grow, still form bonds with those around me. If everybody in this exuberant, tell-it-like-it-is culture wants to call me out, okay. That’s beautiful. The excitement they are feeling makes their lives better and I can learn to do the same or at least appreciate it. In response to their enthusiasm in the street, much of the time the only thing my introverted self has to do is simply smile and wave and there, my job is done.

When, occasionally, the attention gets a little negative, I just have to breathe and think rationally and be brave and everything turns out fine.

I’m sitting here, at the desk in my room, kind of laughing right now, honestly. Because in the US, for much of my life, I spent so much time trying to be different. In such a big population, it’s difficult. I started wearing bohemian clothes and digging more into my pseudo-hippie roots as a young teen, and then what happens? The next year American Eagle decides that’s what we should all be wearing and boom, I was no longer original.

When I was 14, finding the wedding style of the day claustrophobic, I knew I wanted an exclusive wedding with a lacy, short white dress, wild flowers everywhere, in a barn or in a field, or both, with subs as the main course and pie for dessert. And then a few years later, that’s what everyone started doing. Like, America didn’t give me enough time to get married with my original idea.

Ya’ll know the state of the story: I got married without a wedding and now I wear mostly jeans and t-shirts.

(This doesn’t mean I don’t ooo and ahhh over everyone's wedding photos, and that I don’t glance through Free People occasionally.)

I guess one could say that my fight to be different backfired. Because now, I am certainly different, without even trying. Maybe that’s what it is: it’s one thing to be in control of your difference (you can change your clothes) it’s another to be intrinsically different (my birth certificate will always be from the USA).

It is one thing to be an American in America expressing my personal freedom (something that is culturally celebrated), and another thing to be an American in a different country, period.

In the first, I’m still not that unique, and in the second, I am a foreigner.

It’s an identity to embrace, not one to run from.

And no matter what I feel, like I said in the beginning, I have a genuine sense that I am called to be here, at least during this time of my life. One is called until they are not.

It is a coward who backtracks out from under their call.  

Corning and I Kiss and Make Up

Winter mornings in Corning are porcelain mornings. Steam from vents, smoke from chimneys, vapor from the Chemung River—all coalesce and swirl slowly out of the teacup valley. From seven to eight ante meridiem, outside is a watercolor world.

Like the exhibit on display until January 8th at the glass museum, these teacup mornings are fragile. When its this cold, ice and glass are more prone to shatter, dry skin more prone to cracking and bleeding. The signs around town for the Blaschka's marine invertebrate exhibit are a frequent reminder that all who live in this community are creating a Fragile Legacy.

But at least we are creating it together.

Blaschka

Like most towns in the Northeast, it's hard to get people to make eye contact with you, whether on the street or at the register. Maybe they're scared. A few years ago, there was a murder a stone's throw from where I live. Every day I pass the dilapidated mansion and, if my imagination is running high, I get chill bumps up my arms and down my back.

People in Corning get angry. Really angry. And if you want your business to outlast tourist season, you'd better open a bar.

Since the town is literally built on glass, building projects are at a standstill. The engineers blued the prints, counted the cost, dug the foundation—and kicked up the dust of lead, cadmium, and arsenic. The State Department of Health—my compadres, those who foster the tyranny of health promotion—said stop.

Okay, so, one less hotel. But in some residential areas, you can't plant vegetable gardens anymore. You can't let your kids dig into the soil with their fingers and toes without worrying. (That is, if you have kids to begin with. Margaret Sanger grew up in Corning and left her mark.)

No gardens, no dirt castles... Takes some of the joy out of being a kid, if you ask me.

Of course, Corning kids might prefer different things than I. I grew up in the dirt, with clean well water to drink, and it was marvelous.

The City of Corning will tell you the water is fine; the microbiology professor at the college on the hill will give you a "hell no it's not."

And yet, despite people and environment and politics, Corning is home.

We are Corning, and we are at home together.

When your car has a bad muffler, and you repeatedly tear up the road at 0300 hours, rather than call the police on you, your neighbors will convene and decide offering to pay for the repair might be the best course of action.

Not that the police are nasty. They wave hello and make you feel safe. Corning emergency personnel are topnotch. Even when off-duty, the ambulance drivers have good taste in donuts. The firetrucks are kept shiny.

When there's a problem, Corning is quick to lend a hand. Families, individuals, and businesses donate time, energy, and money to fix neighborhoods, whether it's boosting curb appeal or remedying a hazardous living situation. 

We all know how to throw a good party on Market Street.

The coffee shop owner's daughter will make your cappuccino and latte on the house just because she wants to.

And, morning to evening, equinox to solstice, Corning is beautiful. Bridges, rivers, diverse people and lifestyles.

Beautiful. Most fragile things are.

----------

Even though we moved three and a half years ago, I was, until last week, legally traceable to a farm in Pennsylvania. I put up with paying taxes in two states to keep it that way for as long as possible. I've been driving three hours round trip to vote, or—when I got smart—casting absentee ballots.

I wanted nothing to do with New York State, except to jump in a lake or climb a mountain, be a part of the land but not the political geography or cultural identity. That still kind of holds true. But the other day, when the man at the DMV gently coached me to smile for the second try at a picture, I laid my weapons down. I gave him a crooked, amused, on-the-verge-of-laughter smile that will make for a classically unflattering, embarrassing driver ID photo. So much for the straight hair, and mascara that I'd bought singularly for the day (first tube in 2 years).

The same week, on my way home from applying for a library card, I turned around where the hill begins to crest. My breath plumed out in front of me. Living in this part of town requires one of two things: snow tires, if you have a car, or above average VO2max if you don't. I looked down the steep street, flanked by snow piles, and then across the river and to the snowy mountains, and all the houses jammed cozily between here and there, and I thought suddenly—it came as a surprise—

"Corning, I kinda love you."

Debrief

I left my small-town, two-gate airport at night and came back at night so I wondered if it really happened or if it was a dream. Waiting at the luggage carousel, ankles itchy from mosquito bites, arms itchy from an old sunburn, the almost empty orange Rx bottle of antibiotic jammed in my pocket; all built a case against the dream theory.

The memories come in snippets, but began to settle into place today. I took my two youngest sisters to visit Grandma for lunch and go for a hike in the woods. First, though, we stopped at the cemetery a few miles from Grandma's. The headstone, recently placed, is regal, fitting, profound. Grandma did a good job designing it. It was cold, so, despite coats and hiking boots, we only stood there a minute. But it was long enough for me to remember the day. Especially the way my 6 inch wedges had pinched my toes. Especially, hopelessness. So much has happened since last July. I'm very thankful for the events of this past week...  

After teaching all afternoon, I was tired and thirsty. Simon* didn't know that, but he waved me into the garden—a grove of fruit trees that grow in the southeast corner of the Colegio Moriah compound. He deftly hacked away at a fresh-picked coconut with his machete, then set the hefty orb in my hands. I tipped my head back and slaked my thirst. Simon is a good man. He does not have a steady job because he's Haitian and the paperwork hasn't gone through. But he works hard, serves at Colegio Moriah in his spare time, and here and there God provides for his family.

Simon's son is 9 months old. He's a hunk—chubby thighs, chubby cheeks, a head of coarse brown curls. I held him for a few minutes during church, before swapping him for an infant with 6 fingers on each hand. Five minutes under a surgeon's care, a few stitches, and a post-op visit is all it would take. But I don't know when or if that will happen. Until it does, the extra appendages dangle uselessly, and I hope they don't get caught in something...damaged...infected.

Another toddler was asleep on the hard wooden pew in front of me. He was sweaty, and beautiful. His eyelids fluttered slightly as voices raised praise in Creole and bass pumped through the old amplifiers. It resonated in my thoracic cavity, echoing off my ribs and messing with my heart's rhythm. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. There is family. I like holding children.

*pseudonym

When we played basketball with middle-schoolers Saturday afternoon in 90* heat, there was a moment when the ball bounced off the backboard and we all reached to catch it. I looked up. The sun was in the corner of my eye, but there was the ball, and there were our outstretched arms: a gradient of color from 100% cocoa to translucent tupelo honey set against a backdrop of crystalline blue. We were all reaching for the same thing: unified. 

There were two things I was not expecting. Well, okay, three. I'll start with the latter: I was not expecting my mission to work. But it did. Despite my tiredness, despite my nerves, despite having to lie down between sessions because I can only take so much stimulation, it was a smashing success. Glory be to God. I taught all the students, and spoke in church four times. I'm glad I had a translator because the pauses gave me space to pray for help. 

Another thing I was not expecting was the paucity of English speakers. Joke's on me. Less than a handful of people I interacted with throughout the week could accommodate my ignorance and speak English to me. Maryah and Kristen were always saving me.

Finally, I was not expecting to find family. "I felt welcomed" is an understatement. "I've never been loved like that" is an overstatement, because I've been loved well my whole life. But you get the point. There is something unspeakably awesome about the gospel's ability to make anyone instant family. It's being touched and held by holiness in a rebellious world. I am in love with the church.

"As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight."

"Two are better than one...a threefold cord is not easily broken." I generally picture that as a husband-wife-child dynamic. But you know, it applies to sisters as well. Working alongside each other for a week in the Dominican changed our relationship. We left the petty grievances of childhood behind and were women together. Why do I pout about being a one-woman team? I have a team. They are my siblings.

I admire Maryah for her service at Colegio Moriah. "Teacher's assistant" may not sound super impressive, but it takes a hero. Those kids don't like to listen. Piecing together the stories of their home-lives rips up your heart. "Maybe that's why the kid doesn't listen." To top if off, there aren't even enough school supplies. The pages of the library books are limp with humidity. There is dirt. The classrooms are dark and stuffy to boot if they aren't on a corner, with multiple walls given to windows. The bathrooms are disgusting—over 400 kids, pre-school to 12th grade, sharing 6 toilets.

The environment is toxic. Until you build up immunity, even treated water makes you sick. Noise pollution keeps you up at night. Someone in the area thinks burning plastic is a good way to get rid of it. There is no public health system to keep the people in check. When Maryah was up half the night coughing, Kristen and I hung out with her under the mosquito netting. Girls talk about lots of things in the middle of the night.

The students, the school, are governed by heroes, but even heroes can only do so much when there isn't enough money.

 Maryah and Kristen rented an entire bus to carry us and a mixture of 20 students, teachers, and friends, to the coast. It takes money, so it doesn't happen a lot. Some of them couldn't swim, even though they are just a half-hour car trip to the water. We tried to teach them. Floating on my back still feels like a miraculous hilarity to me, so it is hard to teach.

All winter I have not let myself go running. I've been trying to give my joints a break, trying to let my body find some sort of equilibrium, trying to keep the stress induced by freezing air to a minimum. That Sunday afternoon, when I finally had a break, when we were all at the shore, I had to run. I had to let it out. With no explanation I took off, sprinting, stretching my stride as long as I could to shock my muscles out of hibernation. It felt so good. A few hundred meters out I slowed, filled my blood with fresh oxygen blown in off the sea.

I turned at the sound of laughter. They had followed: A dozen pairs of legs giving flight. Feet pounded out a beat on the quasi-cement formed at the water's edge. They were a blur of smiles and neon swimsuits. The girls' filmy cover-ups trailed behind. For an afternoon we lived a little like we will in heaven, when we've been freed once and for all from the cages that uniquely constrain each of us.

We had to run. It's what you do when you are happy.

The littlest children are almost always happy. They smile up at you, a mouthful of baby pearls. They are too little to know, but Colegio Moriah is saving their lives. With education, with childhood memories of being safe, fed, and loved at school if not at home, with seeds of the gospel planted in hearts that are fertile like the Caribbean soil, they have a chance at a life that is not a textbook case of evolutionary Darwinism drenched in sin. Survival won't be the plot line of their lives. They will be equipped to serve, to raise resilient children themselves. Equipped to pause and watch the sun rise, its new mercies glinting off palm fronds and corrugated steel roofs. They will taste and see that the Lord is good and be loved by Him. 

They will. If we help the children, they will.

 In high school I was stirred by Alan Paton's 1948 novel, Cry, The Beloved Country, which is themed around apartheid and redemption in South Africa. His book has perhaps subliminally directed my life. At the end of one chapter he wrote: "And money is not something to go mad about, and throw your hat into the air for. Money is for food and clothes and comfort, and a visit to the pictures. Money is to make happy the lives of children. Money is for security, and for dreams, and for hopes, and for purposes. Money is for buying the fruits of the earth, of the land where you were born."

Happy children grow into resilient adults. Make happy the life of a child by sponsoring a student at Colegio Moriah for just $25/month now (click here).

Heyday

It's time for this body to catch up to my soul.

I've started making actions out of faith for faith. It's a little like conducting an experiment, and it's working.

This morning I danced in the kitchen at 6:40 as my oatmeal cooked in the microwave. The radio was blasting. Grandma gets up at 5:30, but doesn't put her hearing aids in until about 7:30, so when she turns the radio on, boy does she turn it on. Lord love 'er.

The radio is always on. It fills this muffled house. I like the noise, and I'll dance to it, even if it's always tuned to our local Christian station. Grew up listening to that station, even gave money to it when I was a pipsqueak. I think their mission is critical, but I also think it is profane. Most churches, most Christian-anything seems profane when compared to the sacredness, the high-holiness, of God.

But if I keep scratching Christian-anythings off the list, soon I'll be left with nothing but lead. Soon I'll be alone. If I turn the radio off because it's not good enough, instead of appreciating its potential and recognizing that "hey, they are preaching the gospel," I accomplish nothing except to fulfill my desire to enforce limits. All I am doing is limiting the capabilities of hard-working people, limiting God by saying He can't use something so...umm...lame, and— Limiting myself.

I limit myself—and God's proffered gift to work in and through me—when I dwell on the past; when I let other people offend me, make me anxious, or make me cry; when I am particular about the location I live in; when I blame things on my personality; when I let one uninspired and emotional, grammatically-incorrect-to-boot worship song ruin the entire service for me; when I let struggling Christians influence my belief about Jesus' power to change; when I turn my back on the church; when I let my mind run on autopilot at all hours and drag me into darkness; when I let my life in America negate everything I ever learned and believed about myself and God and others and beauty and the church and history and brotherhood and reconciliation while I was in Italy.

Pathetically, that's what it all comes down to: Italy. Six months out of 22 years, but I keep coming back to it. I have an effervescent faith over there. A deep calm in my soul when I am over there. A purpose. Every time I come home, I lose it. 

That is not right. The Italian version of myself is not a fake version. It's the more real, more eternal version of myself. My body unites with my soul when I am there.

Living in America shouldn't hydrolyze me. It shouldn't make me compartmentalize. No matter how much people don't get along, no matter death, no matter minimum wage, no matter the doctor saying "there's really nothing we can do, but you'll be fine, just live with it," no matter the absence of Alps—

I don't want to limit myself anymore.

This is not Italy, and I've never been more home than I am now. But I am not limited.

I'm not letting it happen anymore. My soul is hollering and won't shut up and my mind is giving in to its blessed cacophony.

And somethings happening. I'm scared to use the word "transformed." I dared to admit to my Mom when I last saw her that I've been in a better frame of mind as of late.

That is what it is, though: seeing everything in new frames. Frames that were built strong and tight out of the best lumber because—dang what grace!—I was raised Christian and my parents, church, friends, and school taught me a thing or two. And those frames are pretty because I've lived in beautiful places my whole life. And they will endure forever because of God. He provided all the materials, built them so they would fit my unique line of sight. But He gave me freedom, said I don't have to use them if I don't want, and either way, mourning and doubting or joyfully submitted He will save me because He's merciful.

But my day to day existence would be better—indeed, could be one hell of a celebration—if I used His frames.

Day to day, minute by minute companionship with someone is what I've needed. A stable source of goodness that promises to be present in every single day of my life, so that no matter what happens with my body, family, church, career, or country I can have hope.

What do you know, I found that companionship with my triune God and everything is changing.

...Just like every Christian radio, book, preacher, friend, etc, said it would. I want to lay some blame and say they didn't emphasize how hard it would be to get here, or how worth it it was once you got there. But I guess they did. I'm not making excuses. I'm done analyzing this whole process. All this time alone, I'm tired of myself. 

So I dance alone before breakfast in the greenish, pre-thunderstorm light, and study at night, alone, as Grandma dozes. I run alone, sleep alone, and it's still lonely and a little sad and some things wrack my nerves, but it doesn't crush me. The routine of the days is still busy-monotonous, but there's an undercurrent of energy, this feeling that anything could happen. And even if it doesn't, even if the day passes as another boring day, the theme du jour was still good. Because I experienced intimacy with God. 

I'm scared to publish this because when I do then people will know I'm in a better frame of mind and they might make me stay this way.

Maybe I should wait for my blog's 10th anniversary. Its only 3 weeks away. I could back out, write something existentially reflective, recap the past 10 years.

...10 years...

What's 3 weeks in 10 years?

10 years in eternity?
 

There is so much incomprehensible math and beauty and truth, why waste my time letting evil tip the scales? It's having its heyday alright. But what's a heyday in eternity? Any time I've been given, I want to redeem.

No One Said Anything About Safe

Midsummer and late afternoon, the storm was breaking the tension. I hurried around, jumping over suitcases and boxes and books, and closed the windows. They were old windows, extra sticky from the damp weather, and I struggled to shut them. It thundered and lightninged, and the power blinked. I was tired but on edge. We'd spent the past two days moving the rest of our belongings out of our house on the farm up to the barn. With barely a one-week notice we had renters moving in the next day. Renters who plan to buy.

—————

They're not the only ones to move in this weekend. In some twist of fate (God's beautiful, merciful plan? Yes. Sometimes I think he might be laughing, but I know he's not. That's not who he is.) I'm back again. Back on this dirt road in the Pennsylvania hills, the place I called home for 20 years, the place I'd spent the past two years putting to rest.

I did put it to rest. Being back, digging it up again, isn't very funny.

At first, I thought this move might be my chance to have one last, drawn out goodbye. I'd clean the house, work on little projects maybe, spend hours on the disc swing hanging from the big maple and let the motion carry my thoughts to things above.

But now there's voices coming from our blue house, there's two boys in the yard, and a chocolate lab runs to meet me when I walk past. I'm happy for them; happy the house will be filled with family and friends again.

—————

All I'm left with are memories. They are beautiful memories, but as I relive again while I live here, they are being colored by the person I am now, the present I am currently living, and it tarnishes them. The beautiful memories ache. The memories of sin and sickness fester. Now I'm making new memories here. Memories of quiet, of solitude, of...death.

The memories are all chaff. Smoke in my mirror. I'm closer to death—the death of my childhood, my expectations, of relationships, and the death of a person—but I'm also closer to eternity. That is why I am here. If I live with my grandmother as her companion, help her around the house, sing a little so it's not so quiet, maybe her eternity-centered faith will rub off on me.

I heard her talk on the phone to a very old friend. "Gene was such a blessing to me. I miss him. But if God wants me here on earth still, I will wake up every morning with joy. And I do."

She longs for heaven, for her final homecoming, where she will be with Jesus and Gene, her best friends, forever. But she won't "let the longing slay her living." That's how strong her faith is.

—————

I know my wish for a permanent home is not unnatural, and that is comforting. I was created to have a stable home to come home to every night. I was created to have a permanent home, family, father. But I was also created with a measure of freedom. Adam freely(-ish?) ate the fruit and humanity fell, lost the permanency. We are doomed to wander as refugees, questioning ourselves and all of life to death; or, we ignore the questions by turning up the music, paper-chasing, drinking a 7th beer, sharing the sheets with someone different every year or month or day.

Whichever way you do it, it's hard and unfulfilling and the questions remain unanswered. We are living God's Plan B for the world (thanks for sharing your wisdom there in the driveway, Nick).

Yet, O happy day, Plan B is better than Plan A. Somehow. Someway. It takes faith to see.

I lack faith.

—————

Grandma does not. She may be physically blind (it's a good thing because it means she can't see how often I tear up and my face gets hot from the emotion) but her spiritual vision is less smokey than mine. The past few years, I'm not sure I've stopped grieving. I'm starting to think I will grieve my whole life.

—————

I want to blame it on my culture. The information revolution has waged war on orthodoxy. Christianity gets branded and mass marketed. Our heroes fall not because they were cut down with swords or burned at the stake for their refusal to deny Christ, but because they didn't do a good enough job of covering the tracks they left behind when coming home from their latest sin.

I despise how American culture influences me. I despise how my genetics influence me. When challenged by my peers, I despise how my upbringing influenced me. (They say I'm this way because it's how I was raised. I tell them I can think for myself, but they don't necessarily listen. I blame their not listening on how they were raised.)

Pretty soon, am I not despising the way God made me? He is sovereign over which nucleotides wound into my strands of DNA. He placed me in this American culture, knew I'd make the jump from the 90's to the double aughts and knew what affect my iPhone would have on me....and He planned accordingly. He was and is sovereign over my family, over my childhood on the lane, and now over this time on the lane when I'm 22.

When I compare the life I've been sovereignly given to the lives of others, who He is also sovereign over, I say, it's not fair!

I say that. And I cry. Faith does not say that. Faith trusts, faith rejoices.

I do rejoice. If I didn't, I'd have ended this long ago.

—————

As a teen, I spent a lot of time lying on my back on the hardwood floor of my loft bedroom, staring up at where the rafters meet, forming an upside down "V" above me. Saturday I laid there again for a while, for the last time. It was a long day. The moment we finished is when it started to rain, when I walked down the lane to finish unpacking, just after we'd finished packing (confused yet?).

That wasn't the first time this summer it had rained on cue. July 14, we all stood in the cemetery, forming a crowded half-circle around a casket draped with the glorious Stars and Stripes. We disbanded after the gun salute and a prayer. The notes of "Taps," trumpeted into the humid air, still hung there as the half-globe sky mourned the loss of a captain, a father, a friend, a husband.

—————

When my two living grandparents—my maternal Papa T and my paternal Gramma—sit side-by-side on the sofa and visit it is strange. Two mourning halves that don't make a whole.

————— 

In the past, I've tended to spend too much time alone. It's why I've tried to make future plans around groups of people, whether SBI or, like I'd been hoping to, moving to EDH this fall. I turned my back on the latter to come live with my grandmother. I couldn't bear the thought of her being alone in this sprawling country house. She has the South Wing, I have the North Wing. But I chose the bedroom on the southernmost end so I'd get sunlight all day. It filters through the locust trees. It dances on the hundreds of flowers out in the garden. The neighbor girls take care of the garden. Another friend cleans the house, and another did some repair work. One set of cousins does the mowing. Aunts and uncles take care of countless other important things, from groceries to bills to "did you take your pills?" — Everything not only to the power of ten, but the power of love.

It takes a village.*

I'm just here to make some noise. Once I turn 25, on a cellular level my body will start the dying process. For now, at 22 years old, I am a body my Grandma can use when her's doesn't do what it used to.

Mostly, I am here to just be.

*In no form whatsoever is that statement an endorsement of H. R. Clinton. I just like the way the words go together.

—————

A couple years ago, when the questions were burning (they never stop), my mother wrote me a note on a torn-out page of a magazine (she's hipster that way). Of course I saved it.

"Perhaps (forse) your responsibility is not to change the world in a Big Way. Maybe it's to just be. Be in the all-encompassing love of God. To "find yourself" different there. Whether the things you do - big or small - change the world is not the objective. All you need to do is this: Abide in His amazing (grace - love) presence and let it fill you and spill out of you so when you come across an orphan, a widow, Cindy Boohoo [family joke], a neighbor, a brother - an enemy - you have something to give to them. It's all God's love - you in Him - He in you - spilling over from your heart. That will be the change that changes the world in Big and small ways."

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God is big and I am small. August 11, Maryah and I drove south to visit our long-time comrades. We four hiked up, up, up a leafy trail until we reached the rocky outcropping. A Virginia valley spread out before us; earth and sky met hazily in the distance. The breeze was lovely. The moment did not feel real. Partly, it was surreal being with Hannah in person. We are very close friends, but living far apart means we have seen each other about once every year or two, and the past few times the average length of any visit has been a pathetic hour. Also, I was sleep deprived, which messed with my head. But, again also, I have trouble grasping reality in general. Life is so strange. It is a mystery.

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Job was the first written account inspired by God. And it's a mystery. It's a book that sets the tone for the rest of Scripture.

"If you have sinned, what do you accomplish against God? If you are righteous, what do you give to him?"

We all multiply words without knowledge.

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The infinite Creator God can be known. He's also a mystery I fear. This strange mixture of fear and love is what keeps me having faith.

"When I am afraid I will trust in You."

My first night sleeping here, during one of my wakeful spells, I heard noises and yes, they scared me. I realized it was all women and children on this end of the lane that night. I am very glad the people moved into our blue house and that the head of the family is a big strong man-at-arms. It's lonely out here, so far from everything, and I want to feel safe.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king, I tell you."

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God is the King.

We Flew Home

On the day of my grandma's memorial service this summer I was back on the lane in the woods. Her ashes were 12 miles south, but we were celebrating her life with my family from Florida. Uncle Eric likes wild blackberries, especially over vanilla ice cream, so the boys and he and I scrounged around for cups and bug spray and headed up into the pines. I was wearing an eyelet skirt that just hit my knees, and not wanting to get scratched but lacking pants, I had dug my snow boots out of the closet and pulled them on. Running up the sunny lane and into the humidity of the forest, swatting at gnats, and disentangling myself from branches and briers, it wasn't long before my legs started to sweat. We found enough berries for dessert, and we talked in the stillness of the woods, the moss like sound-proofing insulation in a recording studio.

Isaac and Steven were shooting .22s nearby, so it got a bit hectic at one point, but such is life.

Such is life. That day, it was perfect. The night before I hadn't slept much, and I had to keep my sunglasses on to hide my tired eyes until the coffee, served by a friendly barista, worked its magic. And the people at the memorial service--it was a big church surrounded by sunflowers and we only filled up the first few pews--cried a little too, but we weren't there to cry. We were there to bring earthly closure on an eternal moment (you'll never succeed, but it does help something in your brain click).

After, it was just my family and the Prutsmans on a grassy rise above Troy standing around a columbarium in a sun-splotched clearing made of chiaroscuro. After, we went back to the farm, land my ancestors have lived on for a while. After, I was running up the mid-summer road in my snow boots, smiling.

I've been wearing those snow boots a lot this past week, clomping around the streets of Corning, visiting people and my old job, trying to stay warm. I think about that girl in those boots that one summer day when we acknowledged death and celebrated life and I want to be her every day. Then I realize, I am her. Italy bound some pages of my life together.

I still don't have the answer to why life is the way it is, but I have enough people to lean on and enough faith, that it's going to be okay.

I came home for Christmas. Spending the holidays with my family is literally what pushed me out the door of SBI and onto a plane, and then another plane, and then another plane. And then I was in the backseat of the SUV, my parents up front, trying to make conversation after 3 months of separation with a brain that had not slept in 42 hours. The first week was all hazy with jet lag and English and MPH and 12-hour clocks and doors that open out when going outside and dollars and catching up and people, lots of people. People in my life is a very good thing and I am thankful.

Now I have a sore throat and am craving humid, pine-saturated summer air to breathe. But it's the shortest, darkest day of the year and Christmas is just a few days away so it's supposed to be cold.

The holiday feels vapid though. Oh, America.

This year I'll just think of being with my whole family, and warmth, and scratched up arms from picking wild blackberries in the woods, and Jesus' life, and the stories of how he's in all our lives.

I think I'll wear my snow boots all day. You need good shoes to move on, and I'm moving on.

The Dirt in My Soul

I went home—or as they say "down to the farm"—this weekend. I put in for a couple of days off from work so I could do so. First time I'd asked for a break, and I still got grief for it, but I was determined. The summer solstice is the best thing to celebrate, next to Christmas and Easter.

Friday night, then, after packing what felt like everything (and practically was everything since I live with just the essentials + my favorite books here) into Misha's backpack (not sure where mine is), I drove straight to the Markell's to dance the night away in a barn lit up with Christmas lights, stars and fireflies just outside. It was a little cold, and I only danced about half the dances, but still a perfect night catching up with old friends, making new ones, and getting swung 'til I was dizzy. While you're there, you really don't stop smiling. Even if you are sitting down you have to tap out the beat with your foot or your hand or your finger or something, and it puts a certain spark in your countenance, no matter how long the week or the year or life has been.

I drove around the hill to home and, after brushing my teeth and washing my feet, tumbled into bed a little after midnight, trying not to think, letting my mind stay dizzy and succumb to sleep. I did, and quickly, but dawn also came quickly. I ate oatmeal and puttered around the house. From a year of not living there, it's quite overgrown. The forest feels closer to the house than ever, despite the years and years we spent pushing it back. Give it another two years, and I think it might swallow our house up altogether. Someone will buy it before then, though... I hope (and pray). It really, really needs to sell. Buying a new place is contingent on it selling, and renting like we are now is tricky business. But there's no going back. It's too late for that. We really, really, had to go. It was time.

Saturday morning, it was also time for me to drive a little farther south and visit my grandmother. It was the part of the weekend I'd been dreading, that I was hiding from as I danced. Yet, despite not wanting to go, I fiercely needed to. So I went to the assisted living home, snuggled in the hills, surrounded by flowers and sunshine. A clutch of old women sat in comfy chairs just inside the front entrance, looking sunshiny themselves, if not a bit disoriented. There was no one at the front desk, so I, too, looked disoriented. I peeked in the main room, then wandered a ways down a hall until two other women who were visiting asked me if they could help me find someone. They must come frequently. That, and it's a quite small place. I told them my grandma's name and one of them immediately knew. I backtracked to one of the first rooms in the hall and walked in without hesitating.

It went okay. I got to say the important things, and though she didn't respond I know she heard and saw. I'm sure that the her, the one that's beneath the morphine and pain and demons, understood in some way.

On the way home, I stopped at the farmer's stand. I'd noticed a sign for strawberries on the way there. I checked my eyes in the the rearview mirror to make sure they weren't red before hopping out of the car. A Troy boy—spent so many years being told to avoid them—sold them to me for 2.50 and a smile, and I called it good. They were pretty little gems. I spent the rest of the drive home thinking how grace is free. I'd call that good too.

At home again, I made pie. Apple pie. The strawberries were just to eat. Though, Andrew made a strawberry rhubarb pie. We were, after all, going to pie. The Perry's and Alex joined us that evening, and we all drove over together. It's a summer solstice celebration that's gone on for around 40 years a few miles from our lane. There's music, and volleyball, and camping, and kegs, and corn hole, and a bonfire, and pie all the time but especially midnight pie. I guess the whole thing is loosely associated with the word "hippie" but you basically just go with it, enjoy it and talk to people if you want, or don't if you don't want to.

We had a rather grand time into the wee hours of the morning. Though I spent the last couple just staring into the fire thinking about my grandmother and why we leave places.

Sunday I went to church and without coffee (if I'd woken up earlier I'd have had time to get coffee—see my dilemma?) still managed to teach my kid's ministry class.

All in all, it was a very real weekend. So many parts of it were good, but it was also hard. I kept thinking of my grandma and life and death.

It helped that the hardness took place in the comfort of the familiar. For as much as I loathe to admit that my identity is wrapped up in a particular place, it's still true. It is frustratingly true. That particular place is so me, it's scary. Yet, why shouldn't it be me? After all, I am it. I was raised there. The water from our well, the energy from grains and vegetables and fruits that grew in our fields and forests, formed me. The matter of my body is literally made from the matter of that earth. The dirt in my soul is Appalachian Pennsylvania mountain dirt. In a very material sense, it defines me. Shapes my thoughts and preferences and lifestyle in more ways than one.

That's why moving was initially so hard. I had to give up an earthly identity...and actually replace it with Jesus. Crazy, right, that my relationship with God would extend to that area of my life? It wasn't drugs, sex, cars, clothing, or people that I was misplacing my identity in. It was my homeland.

Granted, even though I "gave it up" it's still just as much a part of me. That's what's frustrating. Even though I presently care less where I live because everywhere is beautiful and my preferences one way or another or my way of expressing my personality just don't matter to me 'cause I'm so over all that, it was still a pleasant feeling to have who I am fit so perfectly in my context on a molecular level. And feel...comfortable.

And then there's Jesus. I'm not sure what that means in the specifics of school and family and friends and future, but I know there are crosses to carry and comfort on a molecular or relational level is not necessarily the aim. Of course, along with crosses, there are promised peaceful rivers to sleep by. I do wonder what lands I'll carry crosses through and where those rivers will be.

Headed North (Found My Words, Act I)

In person, I frequently run out of words; on paper, not so much. This month has been the exception. I honestly have not known what to say, even though there's plenty. Kind of like there is plenty to do, but I hardly do anything. One afternoon I was standing in the four-acre field, staring off at the eastern horizon, my feet buried in the warm, dusty soil that's still abominably stony considering how many hours my siblings and I have spent rock picking. I was thinking about Italy—hence the eastern horizon—and of when I was a little girl, and everything that happened between. Memories upon memories.

Out of the corner of my eye Maryah was hanging laundry—my laundry, actually—on the line to dry. Studying her Spanish terms at the same time, no doubt. 'Cause she's responsible like that, and I'm just not anymore. For some reason, I'm overwrought.

Of course, there's more to the reason than "some." It's because I'm losing it: the soil I grew up in.

I've traded the trees and fields and hills and familiar roads and hiding spots and sleeping under the rafters and stars for an apartment in the middle of town.

They, my family, moved, so I moved with them.

We've talked about moving for years—even seeing the For Sale sign in our yard was not that surprising. What's surprising is that we actually moved this time, and quickly.

It does make a lot of sense. Dad—finally, in this sucky economy that ruined everything for millions of people including my family—has a job here; Isaac has cheaper education opportunities to kick start his medical career; and it makes Mom's dream of living on a lake come true.

Buildings on three sides, lake on the other. Down a few flights of stairs in the apartment building—a renovated utilities plant—a hop across the railroad tracks, and you're in the lake. Not that bad. I adore the lake. I can sit on the unfinished dock and stare at it for hours, or float in it for hours, drown out the noise of the construction crew building the condos right next to us—the condos Dad is going to brand and market to the masses. It's lovely. Our apartment is 800 square feet, brand new, cozy, and gorgeously designed, from the brick accent walls, to the cupboards, to the triangular deck. We girls share the master bedroom, and though it's quite the squeeze and I miss my own room, sleeping in the same bed with Sanna every night is rather comforting, despite the fact that she's a cover-stealer and I'm a terrible offensive sleeper.

I need comforting right now. It's unimaginably hard leaving the lane in Pennsylvania. True, when I went to Italy I didn't miss it. But that's because I knew I was coming back to it. And though when I came back, I knew this area had let go of me, I was still holding onto it, or at least my idea of it. Suddenly, I'm leaving it, having to let go of it, and one day soon there will be no coming back. I actually already tried going back, but spending the weekend all alone in that big, empty post and beam house wasn't worth it.

The memories flood in with such force it knocks the wind out me. Memories like playing hide-and-go-seek in fields of rye or peas, screaming as my brothers chased me. Building forts and fences. Chasing the cows that got out of the fences. Swinging from the big old maple. Catching fireflies underneath the shooting stars. Digging clay out of the swamp and making little pots. Gardening with Grandma and Grandpa. Taking my nap in the cab of the combine during harvesting. Birchtown. Skiing in the pines and sledding down the cherry bowl. Going out into the woods each fall to fill the back of the old Ford with firewood over and over until we had enough to last the winter. Picking wild berries...

It goes on and on; I only stop now because, like this past month, it's too draining to put on paper. It is what is in my heart. It is who I am.

Who I am. I've been learning a lot about that recently.