The More Loving One
- W. H. Auden
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
just along for the ride
Malaysia has a distinctive smell. I especially notice it in the morning when I first open the door to check on the laundry and the stray cat who frequents our yard, or to say goodbye to my husband as he leaves for his hour-long commute to work. It’s not a pleasant smell, but not unpleasant, either. It just is. And I imagine myself as an old woman some day catching a whiff of something and saying nostalgically, “That smells like Malaysia.” By then these two years will be a faded, fleeting memory, but today they are not, and they stretch ahead of me like a blank canvas waiting for the artist to begin his work. He has given me no hint of his plans, his style, his medium, his vision.
Our house is on a corner, on a sort of cul-de-sac, really a dead end with a wall. So to drive anywhere you have to go around three sides of the block to get to the street that leads out of our gated community. I realized this morning that you can clearly see the third corner of that progression out our back kitchen window. I glanced out idly just as my husband rounded the corner on his way to the office. I thought that if I were a newly-wed I would have discovered that window view weeks ago, and stood there to watch every morning after he left the house for one last glimpse of him, but I am not a newly-wed. I am a wife about to turn fifty after twenty-two years of kissing my husband good-bye most mornings. Sometimes he leaves for work before I am out of bed. There are some things which a global move has not changed.
It surprises me how quickly I have become used to the subtleties of the weather here. I imagined the climate as one long, unbroken stream of hot, humid air, and laughed when I heard that people distinguished between 85 and 88 degree days - I, who was accustomed to days when the temperature may vary 40 or 50 degrees between 5 AM and 2 PM - but I find my thermostat has already become more fine-tuned. I hear myself saying things like, “Oh, it’s not as hot this morning” with an element of true surprise in my voice. But I find myself still expecting the thermometer to observe a Northern schedule, albeit in a severely truncated range; I am still surprised to step outside at 11 PM and find it has grown hotter than it was at 8. Things are supposed to cool off overnight and heat up in the morning. Not so in Malaysia.
I am also learning to sweat gracefully. Well, maybe not gracefully, but a little more graciously. I come from a long line of pale complected English sorts who turn red in the face and wet all over when the humidity begins to rise. I have always hated heat for that reason and made sure anyone within earshot knew it. Now that I cannot escape it (if I'm outdoors - there is always air conditioning), I find I am beginning to make peace with the sticky dampness. I seem to spend less time fretting over the heat when there is no hope of it abating in a day or two, and I am getting better at ignoring the moisture that is dripping off my nose and down my shirt. Besides, I console myself, I could be wearing a head scarf and long sleeves like half the women in Malaysia.
I cooked my first “Indian” meal two days ago – not very good, really. It was nothing like the food at Al Awahz on the corner (I always want to call it Al Jazeerah since they always have that on the TV when we are there.) Both dishes I cooked were OK, but neither had the real bite of true Indian food, in spite of the fact that I had just filled fifteen spice jars with seeds and powders never before seen in my kitchen. I have a lot to learn.
As I write one of my daughters is downstairs picking out the melody to “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” on the piano. I am surprised every time I write the date to realize that November is drawing to a close. It feels like August – in more ways than one. Christmas seems like a long way away still – maybe two years away. I don’t even find myself nostalgic about Christmas, at least not yet, because it seems like mid-summer, and who dreams about Christmas in August? Yesterday I hung up the primitive wooden snowman inscribed with the words, “Let It Snow” next to our front door, on the wall in between the shoe cupboard (no shoes in the house), the mosaic and the heavy dark wood door. He looks good there, though I am afraid his words will not seem prophetic like they always did in New Hampshire.
One of the many things that has changed since we moved is the size of our family; not because we moved, just coincidentally at the same time, but we sit down to dinner at the table we had custom made for 12 and sort of huddle toward the middle, a small company of seven some nights, only six the nights Claire works at the restaurant. The room is huge, the sounds echo off the marble floors and bounce back from the twelve foot ceilings. We feel as small and insignificant in our own house as we do outside. We miss the days of bumping elbows around a crowded kitchen table with ourselves and our guests; we miss chatting with each other while we wait in line for the shower on Sunday mornings or the bathroom before bed. We miss complaining about how long so and so is taking. Now we can all linger in the shower and no one cares.
This morning as I showered in my huge tiled bath the words from an old Keith Green song somehow slipped into my mind, "Nothing lasts except the grace of God." And I realized that even if we had never made this move, if we had hung onto the security of our lives in small-town New Hampshire, still nothing would last, everything would still change. A and R would still have flown away to India and New Zealand,would still only come home for a brief hiatus before going to college - the prelude to going away for good. My "baby" would still learn to read and to swim and to take care of herselfvery well, thank you. Nothing lasts, but that one fact; nothing is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow but that one Person.
I've decided that the best advice I've heard this year was the last thing my pastor said to me when we left Vermont, "Enjoy the ride." Some parts are more exciting than others, some stretches fly by, some will give you whiplash, others seems to climb endlessly. Once the train starts there's no jumping off, so you might as well enjoy the ride. I'm trying to.
Our house is on a corner, on a sort of cul-de-sac, really a dead end with a wall. So to drive anywhere you have to go around three sides of the block to get to the street that leads out of our gated community. I realized this morning that you can clearly see the third corner of that progression out our back kitchen window. I glanced out idly just as my husband rounded the corner on his way to the office. I thought that if I were a newly-wed I would have discovered that window view weeks ago, and stood there to watch every morning after he left the house for one last glimpse of him, but I am not a newly-wed. I am a wife about to turn fifty after twenty-two years of kissing my husband good-bye most mornings. Sometimes he leaves for work before I am out of bed. There are some things which a global move has not changed.
It surprises me how quickly I have become used to the subtleties of the weather here. I imagined the climate as one long, unbroken stream of hot, humid air, and laughed when I heard that people distinguished between 85 and 88 degree days - I, who was accustomed to days when the temperature may vary 40 or 50 degrees between 5 AM and 2 PM - but I find my thermostat has already become more fine-tuned. I hear myself saying things like, “Oh, it’s not as hot this morning” with an element of true surprise in my voice. But I find myself still expecting the thermometer to observe a Northern schedule, albeit in a severely truncated range; I am still surprised to step outside at 11 PM and find it has grown hotter than it was at 8. Things are supposed to cool off overnight and heat up in the morning. Not so in Malaysia.
I am also learning to sweat gracefully. Well, maybe not gracefully, but a little more graciously. I come from a long line of pale complected English sorts who turn red in the face and wet all over when the humidity begins to rise. I have always hated heat for that reason and made sure anyone within earshot knew it. Now that I cannot escape it (if I'm outdoors - there is always air conditioning), I find I am beginning to make peace with the sticky dampness. I seem to spend less time fretting over the heat when there is no hope of it abating in a day or two, and I am getting better at ignoring the moisture that is dripping off my nose and down my shirt. Besides, I console myself, I could be wearing a head scarf and long sleeves like half the women in Malaysia.
I cooked my first “Indian” meal two days ago – not very good, really. It was nothing like the food at Al Awahz on the corner (I always want to call it Al Jazeerah since they always have that on the TV when we are there.) Both dishes I cooked were OK, but neither had the real bite of true Indian food, in spite of the fact that I had just filled fifteen spice jars with seeds and powders never before seen in my kitchen. I have a lot to learn.
As I write one of my daughters is downstairs picking out the melody to “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” on the piano. I am surprised every time I write the date to realize that November is drawing to a close. It feels like August – in more ways than one. Christmas seems like a long way away still – maybe two years away. I don’t even find myself nostalgic about Christmas, at least not yet, because it seems like mid-summer, and who dreams about Christmas in August? Yesterday I hung up the primitive wooden snowman inscribed with the words, “Let It Snow” next to our front door, on the wall in between the shoe cupboard (no shoes in the house), the mosaic and the heavy dark wood door. He looks good there, though I am afraid his words will not seem prophetic like they always did in New Hampshire.
One of the many things that has changed since we moved is the size of our family; not because we moved, just coincidentally at the same time, but we sit down to dinner at the table we had custom made for 12 and sort of huddle toward the middle, a small company of seven some nights, only six the nights Claire works at the restaurant. The room is huge, the sounds echo off the marble floors and bounce back from the twelve foot ceilings. We feel as small and insignificant in our own house as we do outside. We miss the days of bumping elbows around a crowded kitchen table with ourselves and our guests; we miss chatting with each other while we wait in line for the shower on Sunday mornings or the bathroom before bed. We miss complaining about how long so and so is taking. Now we can all linger in the shower and no one cares.
This morning as I showered in my huge tiled bath the words from an old Keith Green song somehow slipped into my mind, "Nothing lasts except the grace of God." And I realized that even if we had never made this move, if we had hung onto the security of our lives in small-town New Hampshire, still nothing would last, everything would still change. A and R would still have flown away to India and New Zealand,would still only come home for a brief hiatus before going to college - the prelude to going away for good. My "baby" would still learn to read and to swim and to take care of herselfvery well, thank you. Nothing lasts, but that one fact; nothing is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow but that one Person.
I've decided that the best advice I've heard this year was the last thing my pastor said to me when we left Vermont, "Enjoy the ride." Some parts are more exciting than others, some stretches fly by, some will give you whiplash, others seems to climb endlessly. Once the train starts there's no jumping off, so you might as well enjoy the ride. I'm trying to.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Thanksgiving past and present
Thou hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more, - a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise.
~George Herbert
I can scarcely believe tomorrow is Thanksgiving - a day which is not associated in my mind so much with giving thanks as with family traditions, some happy and some not so pleasing. I have spent most of my 50 thanksgivings with family, though I can remember one when I was 21 that I spent at a restaurant with a date. But most have been some variation of the theme, "Over the river and through the woods."
The first Thanksgivings I can remember were spent at my grandmother's house, an urban bungalow in Massachusetts to which we repaired early Thanksgiving morning. Nanny, as we knew her, was always busy in the kitchen in a flowered apron, her iron gray hair pulled back in a severe bun, tempered with crimped waves made with an old fashioned curling iron on the sides of her temples. She was lean and energetic and opinionated. I always found her intimidating.
My mother would pitch in to help and we kids would roam around the tiny house, studying the china dogs on the knick knack shelves, watching the hours strike on the Black Forest cuckoo clock, sitting on the scratchy, maroon chenille sofa, and looking through the drawers in the small roll-top desk in my mother's old bedroom. The Macy's Thanksgiving day parade was always on the small black and white TV, but it never lasted long enough. It always seemed an eternity till dinner, and there was nothing to do but wait.
The 1930's vintage table always had the extra leaf in and filled the small dining room. It was set with Nanny's best china and with the traditional turkey and pilgrim salt and pepper shakers. The dinner plates always had a pressed glass cup in their centers full of my grandmother's homemade fruit cocktail. We dreaded that fruit cocktail. It was nothing like the syrupy sweet kind you bought in cans at the A & P; this was tart and made with grapefruit! My mother always warned us not to complain about it and to eat it all if we hoped to have the good food, so we all choked it down every year, exchanging knowing, sympathetic glances across the table, and sighed with relief when it was gone.
Then we could dig into the real food. There was turkey, of course, and mashed potatoes, gravy in a fancy gravy boat that only came out at Thanksgiving, carrots, peas, sweet potatoes, stuffing, banana bread, cranberry bread, butter, jellied cranberry sauce from a can and my grandmother's cranberry-orange relish that she made in the old-fashioned food grinder. When we had eaten all we could the table would be cleared and the real treat appeared - Nanny's steamed pudding with hard sauce. I never remember eating this any day but Thanksgiving, although it is one of the most heavenly flavors I remember from childhood. Even though it was incredibly rich and came on the heels of a huge dinner, I always felt as if I could eat it all day.
AFter dessert my mother and grandmother cleaned up and washed dishes while the rest of us watched the early dark fall and waited for the last tradition of the day. We always drove to Shoppers World, one of the first suburban shopping centers in Massachusetts, to see the animated Christmas decorations in the plate glass windows. The big, brightly lit windows were always filled with scenes from Santa's workshop where elves worked away at making toys and Santa and Mrs Santa watched approvingly. The nearly life-size elves hammered and sawed and nodded and sewed in an amazingly life-like way. We were spellbound every year. When we got too cold to watch any longer, (it was always cold on Thanksgiving), we piled in the station wagon and headed for home, sleepy and stuffed and breathlessly excited about the advent of the Christmas season which could now officially begin.
That was how I remember Thanksgiving until I was 12 years old. Always the same, with the same thrills the same expectations, the same challenges. Not completely happy, since there were always tensions between my grandmother and my father, with my mother taking her mother's part, but still comforting in its predictability, its sameness.
Sameness is what the season lacks for me this year. We are in Malaysia, only three weeks into a nearly two-year stint. We left New England just before the snow flew, and landed two days later in 80 degree weather complete with palm trees and geckos. We know no one, have no family to spend the day with, no turkey, no traditional china or serving bowls, no pumpkin for pies, no Jack Frost nipping at our noses, none of the trappings which make the day FEEL like Thanksgiving. No one else even KNOWS it is Thanksgiving, and my husband will be working all day Thursday and the next day. There are not even any Black Friday sales to avoid.
So this year we can celebrate the day with true thankfulness. All the usual trappings which distract us from the day's original purpose are missing, and all that is left is the name and the history of this day. We can perhaps feel a bit what the founders of the feast felt as they gave thanks far from home and loved ones in a strange land with strangers for guests. We can practice being thankful when it does not please us to be so, and thus capture more of the true meaning of the day than perhaps ever before. I don't think tomorrow will feel like Thanksgiving at all, but I hope it will live up to its name anyway.
Give one thing more, - a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise.
~George Herbert
I can scarcely believe tomorrow is Thanksgiving - a day which is not associated in my mind so much with giving thanks as with family traditions, some happy and some not so pleasing. I have spent most of my 50 thanksgivings with family, though I can remember one when I was 21 that I spent at a restaurant with a date. But most have been some variation of the theme, "Over the river and through the woods."
The first Thanksgivings I can remember were spent at my grandmother's house, an urban bungalow in Massachusetts to which we repaired early Thanksgiving morning. Nanny, as we knew her, was always busy in the kitchen in a flowered apron, her iron gray hair pulled back in a severe bun, tempered with crimped waves made with an old fashioned curling iron on the sides of her temples. She was lean and energetic and opinionated. I always found her intimidating.
My mother would pitch in to help and we kids would roam around the tiny house, studying the china dogs on the knick knack shelves, watching the hours strike on the Black Forest cuckoo clock, sitting on the scratchy, maroon chenille sofa, and looking through the drawers in the small roll-top desk in my mother's old bedroom. The Macy's Thanksgiving day parade was always on the small black and white TV, but it never lasted long enough. It always seemed an eternity till dinner, and there was nothing to do but wait.
The 1930's vintage table always had the extra leaf in and filled the small dining room. It was set with Nanny's best china and with the traditional turkey and pilgrim salt and pepper shakers. The dinner plates always had a pressed glass cup in their centers full of my grandmother's homemade fruit cocktail. We dreaded that fruit cocktail. It was nothing like the syrupy sweet kind you bought in cans at the A & P; this was tart and made with grapefruit! My mother always warned us not to complain about it and to eat it all if we hoped to have the good food, so we all choked it down every year, exchanging knowing, sympathetic glances across the table, and sighed with relief when it was gone.
Then we could dig into the real food. There was turkey, of course, and mashed potatoes, gravy in a fancy gravy boat that only came out at Thanksgiving, carrots, peas, sweet potatoes, stuffing, banana bread, cranberry bread, butter, jellied cranberry sauce from a can and my grandmother's cranberry-orange relish that she made in the old-fashioned food grinder. When we had eaten all we could the table would be cleared and the real treat appeared - Nanny's steamed pudding with hard sauce. I never remember eating this any day but Thanksgiving, although it is one of the most heavenly flavors I remember from childhood. Even though it was incredibly rich and came on the heels of a huge dinner, I always felt as if I could eat it all day.
AFter dessert my mother and grandmother cleaned up and washed dishes while the rest of us watched the early dark fall and waited for the last tradition of the day. We always drove to Shoppers World, one of the first suburban shopping centers in Massachusetts, to see the animated Christmas decorations in the plate glass windows. The big, brightly lit windows were always filled with scenes from Santa's workshop where elves worked away at making toys and Santa and Mrs Santa watched approvingly. The nearly life-size elves hammered and sawed and nodded and sewed in an amazingly life-like way. We were spellbound every year. When we got too cold to watch any longer, (it was always cold on Thanksgiving), we piled in the station wagon and headed for home, sleepy and stuffed and breathlessly excited about the advent of the Christmas season which could now officially begin.
That was how I remember Thanksgiving until I was 12 years old. Always the same, with the same thrills the same expectations, the same challenges. Not completely happy, since there were always tensions between my grandmother and my father, with my mother taking her mother's part, but still comforting in its predictability, its sameness.
Sameness is what the season lacks for me this year. We are in Malaysia, only three weeks into a nearly two-year stint. We left New England just before the snow flew, and landed two days later in 80 degree weather complete with palm trees and geckos. We know no one, have no family to spend the day with, no turkey, no traditional china or serving bowls, no pumpkin for pies, no Jack Frost nipping at our noses, none of the trappings which make the day FEEL like Thanksgiving. No one else even KNOWS it is Thanksgiving, and my husband will be working all day Thursday and the next day. There are not even any Black Friday sales to avoid.
So this year we can celebrate the day with true thankfulness. All the usual trappings which distract us from the day's original purpose are missing, and all that is left is the name and the history of this day. We can perhaps feel a bit what the founders of the feast felt as they gave thanks far from home and loved ones in a strange land with strangers for guests. We can practice being thankful when it does not please us to be so, and thus capture more of the true meaning of the day than perhaps ever before. I don't think tomorrow will feel like Thanksgiving at all, but I hope it will live up to its name anyway.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Unemployed in Malaysia
Sonnet: On his blindness
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best, his state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.
I don't have a lot in common with John Milton, would that I did, but I have always loved this sonnet. It was one of the first poems I memorized to present in Freshman Speech class at BJU. It's one of the few poems I can still quote. It came to mind this morning when I was reviewing my last two weeks. I feel as useless as Milton must have when he considered his blindness.
Moving to an utterly foreign culture has wiped out any sense of usefulness I ever felt. At least I can speak the language here (or, rather, they speak my language), so I guess it could be worse, but I hate the feeling of living in a place where taking care of myself (and my family.. . ) is a full-time job. I hate the fact that the small talents I have are "lodged with me useless." I feel as if I am not only shirking reaponsibilites "at home" in my land of origin (taking care of ill relatives, helping friends in various extremities), but I am not contributing anything here.
I feel a bit like Will in About A Boy - my day is spent doing things like calling a taxi, waiting for a taxi, telling the taxi driver "No, I don't know how to get there; that's why I called you." Shopping for groceries, and realizing at the checkout that I don't have much in my full cart that I can actually cook or anyone can actually eat. . . at least there is peanut butter here. Walking to the exercise room, waiting for the treadmill, sweating gallons on the treadmill, walking home, taking a shower. Then it's time to call another taxi to run a different errand. . . . and finally going out to eat because I have no dishware to cook with yet and my oven has not been delivered.
I guess there is an element of pride in my discontent. I like to think of myself as a worthwhile person, a worker not a Queen Bee, a producer not a consumer. I am having a hard time becoming a student, not a teacher. I don't like feeling like a child, like a less than competent grown up! There is probably a lesson in humility I need to learn, a lesson in my own dispensability, a lesson in waiting to be shown the next step. This is not what I expected to find in Malaysia, but it appears to be my first lesson: They also serve who only stand and wait.
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best, his state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.
I don't have a lot in common with John Milton, would that I did, but I have always loved this sonnet. It was one of the first poems I memorized to present in Freshman Speech class at BJU. It's one of the few poems I can still quote. It came to mind this morning when I was reviewing my last two weeks. I feel as useless as Milton must have when he considered his blindness.
Moving to an utterly foreign culture has wiped out any sense of usefulness I ever felt. At least I can speak the language here (or, rather, they speak my language), so I guess it could be worse, but I hate the feeling of living in a place where taking care of myself (and my family.. . ) is a full-time job. I hate the fact that the small talents I have are "lodged with me useless." I feel as if I am not only shirking reaponsibilites "at home" in my land of origin (taking care of ill relatives, helping friends in various extremities), but I am not contributing anything here.
I feel a bit like Will in About A Boy - my day is spent doing things like calling a taxi, waiting for a taxi, telling the taxi driver "No, I don't know how to get there; that's why I called you." Shopping for groceries, and realizing at the checkout that I don't have much in my full cart that I can actually cook or anyone can actually eat. . . at least there is peanut butter here. Walking to the exercise room, waiting for the treadmill, sweating gallons on the treadmill, walking home, taking a shower. Then it's time to call another taxi to run a different errand. . . . and finally going out to eat because I have no dishware to cook with yet and my oven has not been delivered.
I guess there is an element of pride in my discontent. I like to think of myself as a worthwhile person, a worker not a Queen Bee, a producer not a consumer. I am having a hard time becoming a student, not a teacher. I don't like feeling like a child, like a less than competent grown up! There is probably a lesson in humility I need to learn, a lesson in my own dispensability, a lesson in waiting to be shown the next step. This is not what I expected to find in Malaysia, but it appears to be my first lesson: They also serve who only stand and wait.
Friday, November 03, 2006
toto, we're not in kansas anymore
It's 10:30 PM in Petaling Jaya. We all fell asleep aboaut 4 PM. Kevin and I just woke up; we have turned off the kids' room lights; I wish they would all sleep till morning, but that seems nearly impossible.
There's a loud, metallic band playing ourside our hotel - somewhere in the strange theme park which seems oddly unthemed; I can see a Native American chief on a mountaintop, a volcano, a castle, a dozen life-sized carved elephants from my balcony. On the other side of the entrance (through a shopping mall complete with an ice-skating rink) is a three story tall sphinx-like creature with a lion's head. Welcome to Malaysia.
The internet connection in our room hasn't been working; the toilet would have overflowed just now if I had not pulled off the tank lid and stopped it. We've discovered that the "everything" store in the mall does not carry any non-prescription pain killers or decongestants, though you can buy something called "Essence of Chicken" and various Indian-looking potions which give no indication of what they are meant to treat. I guess you just know that if you live anywhere they are sold.
M just woke up. She took her Tin Tin book out on the balcony where she is sipping coconut milk through a straw from a whole coconut. The sound of the man-made waterfall in the water park can be heard when the band takes a break. The really long hanging walkway stretching from one side of the park to the other (think of the Emperor's New Groove. . . ) is strung with lights.
Our five year old saw her first burkha today. The sight is always made doubly strange by the fact that the men accompanying these shrouded figures are so often wearing shorts and t-shirts. It feels so different than encountering an Amish couple, for example, who are at least a matched set. These pairs always have a whiff of domination and servility about them.
Ivy also tried guava, mango and watermelon juice today. She's remembering to point with her thumb, not forefinger, and is taking most most things in stride. She's a pro on a plane by now - reminding us about the seat belt lights and tray tables if we miss the cues. She knows when to pull out her passort and boarding pass and grabs her own bin for her shoes and bag at security checkpoints.
She's trying to figure out the difference between "staring" and "looking," which is not an easy distinction for me to explain. At a Thai restaurant at lunch today she was interested in the women in traditional costumewho kept hovering around our table, but also noticed the large fish tank in the center of the room. When I asked her if she wanted to go look at the fish she declined, but correctly noted that, "The fish wouldn't mind if I stared at them."
All in all, the trip was amazingly smooth. We only lost one bag out of 14, the one with my clothes and toiletries, of course, and made all our connections easily. The 16 hour flight was a breeze- between sleeping and eating non-stop, and watcing videos on their personal screens, no one was even bored. I manged to finish a novel I've been working on for weeks - reading, not writing. We have, by the grace of God, gotten along pretty well, too, with only a few minor squabbles despite frayed nerves and bloodshot eyes.
One ongoing disagreement is over the ontoloogy of "home." We find we are all constantly defining and redefining the word "home" in our conversations, which is not, I guess, unlike what happens on an extended vacation; but we keep reminding each other that we are NOT on vacation. The casual phrase, "when we get home. . . . " has acquired an ambiguous context. The speaker is required to to clarify whether he means, "back to the hotel room," "moved into our new house," (though I don't think anyone has actually used the phrase that way yet), or, "back to New Hampshire." P is the strict constructionist among us; "home" has one and only one meaning for him. He even took us to task in the restaurant today for telling the server we'd like to take some of the leftovers "home with us." They would no longer be worth eating if we did that, he pointed out.
So here I sit in a lovely hotel room on the far side of the world, away from almost everything and everyone I hold dear. I freely confess that I don't know why I'm here, though I am holding onto the memory of that morning in June when I felt as if God had punched me in the solar plexus (that's really how I felt; I don't know why), and the decision to move here became a matter of simple obedience, no longer a choice that was up to me to make.
I dread moving into our beautiful, sterile new house. I dread the morning just 4 days away when K drives off to work and leaves the rest of us in a huge, empty house with nothing on the schedule, no friends to call, nowhere to go - a van in the car park but no one to drive it, bereft of our familiar comfort objects, bereft of the novelty of just having arrived.
Then I remember that I have often longed for the experience I have had in the past of having to cling desperately to God and to my feeble faith in Him when there was nothing else to sink my fingernails into. In recent years my soul has grown fat and comfortable (alright, not just my soul!). My church and friends have been a safety net, my children have been happy with their lives, our parents have been in relatively good health. I have had my little niches and my familiar haunts so I have not really needed to hang onto God for all I was worth. But I sense that is no longer the case.
And I wonder if that's really why I'm here - if it's not for some "ministry" I fancy I might have in someone else's life, but if might be primarily for me, to save me from my self-centered, self-satisfied, self-sufficient, self-serving life. If that's God's purpose, in part or in the whole, He is off to a great start.
There's a loud, metallic band playing ourside our hotel - somewhere in the strange theme park which seems oddly unthemed; I can see a Native American chief on a mountaintop, a volcano, a castle, a dozen life-sized carved elephants from my balcony. On the other side of the entrance (through a shopping mall complete with an ice-skating rink) is a three story tall sphinx-like creature with a lion's head. Welcome to Malaysia.
The internet connection in our room hasn't been working; the toilet would have overflowed just now if I had not pulled off the tank lid and stopped it. We've discovered that the "everything" store in the mall does not carry any non-prescription pain killers or decongestants, though you can buy something called "Essence of Chicken" and various Indian-looking potions which give no indication of what they are meant to treat. I guess you just know that if you live anywhere they are sold.
M just woke up. She took her Tin Tin book out on the balcony where she is sipping coconut milk through a straw from a whole coconut. The sound of the man-made waterfall in the water park can be heard when the band takes a break. The really long hanging walkway stretching from one side of the park to the other (think of the Emperor's New Groove. . . ) is strung with lights.
Our five year old saw her first burkha today. The sight is always made doubly strange by the fact that the men accompanying these shrouded figures are so often wearing shorts and t-shirts. It feels so different than encountering an Amish couple, for example, who are at least a matched set. These pairs always have a whiff of domination and servility about them.
Ivy also tried guava, mango and watermelon juice today. She's remembering to point with her thumb, not forefinger, and is taking most most things in stride. She's a pro on a plane by now - reminding us about the seat belt lights and tray tables if we miss the cues. She knows when to pull out her passort and boarding pass and grabs her own bin for her shoes and bag at security checkpoints.
She's trying to figure out the difference between "staring" and "looking," which is not an easy distinction for me to explain. At a Thai restaurant at lunch today she was interested in the women in traditional costumewho kept hovering around our table, but also noticed the large fish tank in the center of the room. When I asked her if she wanted to go look at the fish she declined, but correctly noted that, "The fish wouldn't mind if I stared at them."
All in all, the trip was amazingly smooth. We only lost one bag out of 14, the one with my clothes and toiletries, of course, and made all our connections easily. The 16 hour flight was a breeze- between sleeping and eating non-stop, and watcing videos on their personal screens, no one was even bored. I manged to finish a novel I've been working on for weeks - reading, not writing. We have, by the grace of God, gotten along pretty well, too, with only a few minor squabbles despite frayed nerves and bloodshot eyes.
One ongoing disagreement is over the ontoloogy of "home." We find we are all constantly defining and redefining the word "home" in our conversations, which is not, I guess, unlike what happens on an extended vacation; but we keep reminding each other that we are NOT on vacation. The casual phrase, "when we get home. . . . " has acquired an ambiguous context. The speaker is required to to clarify whether he means, "back to the hotel room," "moved into our new house," (though I don't think anyone has actually used the phrase that way yet), or, "back to New Hampshire." P is the strict constructionist among us; "home" has one and only one meaning for him. He even took us to task in the restaurant today for telling the server we'd like to take some of the leftovers "home with us." They would no longer be worth eating if we did that, he pointed out.
So here I sit in a lovely hotel room on the far side of the world, away from almost everything and everyone I hold dear. I freely confess that I don't know why I'm here, though I am holding onto the memory of that morning in June when I felt as if God had punched me in the solar plexus (that's really how I felt; I don't know why), and the decision to move here became a matter of simple obedience, no longer a choice that was up to me to make.
I dread moving into our beautiful, sterile new house. I dread the morning just 4 days away when K drives off to work and leaves the rest of us in a huge, empty house with nothing on the schedule, no friends to call, nowhere to go - a van in the car park but no one to drive it, bereft of our familiar comfort objects, bereft of the novelty of just having arrived.
Then I remember that I have often longed for the experience I have had in the past of having to cling desperately to God and to my feeble faith in Him when there was nothing else to sink my fingernails into. In recent years my soul has grown fat and comfortable (alright, not just my soul!). My church and friends have been a safety net, my children have been happy with their lives, our parents have been in relatively good health. I have had my little niches and my familiar haunts so I have not really needed to hang onto God for all I was worth. But I sense that is no longer the case.
And I wonder if that's really why I'm here - if it's not for some "ministry" I fancy I might have in someone else's life, but if might be primarily for me, to save me from my self-centered, self-satisfied, self-sufficient, self-serving life. If that's God's purpose, in part or in the whole, He is off to a great start.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)