5 posts from March 2008

Home again. Home again. Back from Romania. Tiny edge of embarrassment to the sheer joy of return to familiarity. But so much pride for giving it up for bit. Pic and tales pending. Stay tuned...

I love the way the sky looks right before it rains.
The soft gray clouds come together like eyebrows knitting on a stern parent's face.
The wind teases just the tops of the trees and they quiver in fear of reproach.
The new color is a pressure I can feel pressing down on my insides
Excitement rises in the wake of it.
Maybe it's because I know today's will be a spring rain.
Maybe it's the smell of it --washed earth, mushrooms, electricity
Maybe I feel the breeze blowing away today, making room for tomorrow.
It fills me, between breaths,
and in these moments there is nothing between my soul and the sky,
not even the window I am gazing through.
I wonder if this is what it feels like to fly.

The weathered wooden screen door jumped out and slapped back into its frame. That sound, that spanking thwat, makes me feel summer more than any other noise. More than the crickets. More than the muffle that the humidity puts on the air. It resonates in my soul, like standing next to the bass drum in the marching band at the 4th of July parade.

I knew it was a hand that set the door banging. No breeze that stiff stirs in the farmhouse in the summer. And soon enough I heard Jerry's worn-out shoe footsteps slapping across our broad yellow hardwood. I was keeled back in that clever, tilting wheeled chair. It was wooden and someone had loved every slat with varnish and oil. It was so old the newspaper office was going to throw it away but we gave it a new home. I loved the giant threads on the great big screw underneath that let you twirl the chair until it was such a height. I felt like I was sitting on one those plates the Cat in the Hat was spinning on broomsticks. My feet were propped up on the family desk. The one gran'poppy made from the oak tree that used to stand in the backyard. Every member of our family for three generations had carved their names in that desk.

Cradled in that handsome chair back I felt like gravity didn't know me. I was leaned so far back I could dangle my head and the world looked upside down. So it took me a  minute to realize that Jerry's right hand was all filled up with the barrel of a shotgun.

Did anyone else get slammed with some winter gnarlyness this month? I have been headache, sore-throat, glue-in-my-nose, drug addict eyes through the past week and while my mind is through with it my body is still fighting. Ugh. The improvement is slow and steady but frustrating. I know I'm better but still not better enough to push it. In fact I'm treating myself with kid gloves so I can be better before I get on the plane. I'm hosting a booster rally for my immune system. Let's win this one team! The sooner the better.

With no good reason. But I needed to let off some of my apprehension. This time next week I will be in Cluj-Napoca, Romania at the beginning of 9 day service trip I am taking with one other colleague and seven students from school. When I say it like that I can feel the value, importance, delight, excitement and incredible opportunity that this experience affords me and the students I am taking. But between now and departure my mind if mostly bleating with anxiety about the travel.

I have been to Canada and Jamaica. Otherwise, I have not been out of the United States and never across the ocean. I jumped at the chance to go on this trip because I thought it would give me a little taste of what international health work (a field I have always held out as the holy grail for me) might be like. Jetting off to a foreign country, working with an agency on the ground to try to build necessary infrastructure to support basic health needs and children and families. The latter part is still bright and shiny to me.  It's the jetting off that seems to be a problem.

I am not a particularly practiced or comfortable flier. I don't sleep well on planes and I wake up even worse. If I am not awake depressurizing my ears I wake up, dizzy, disoriented, out of breath and nauseous, not to mention the dry itch in my eyes the tackiness in my mouth. So I arrive tired and then the 1-2 combination is completed with a stiff slug to the stomach of jet lag. They are seven hours ahead of the east coast. Since I'm working next week, I don't get to try to reset.

Finally there is the packing for unpredictable weather. 'Romania is sort of like New England in March.'  Reassuring in that I know to expect anything.  A bit hard to deal with because the weather could be, y'know anything. That in and of itself is not so terrible. I just happen to be a horrible packer. I hate it. I dislike having baggage. It feels like a ball and chain. If I had my druthers I would go most places with the clothes on my back, comfort items, money and maybe one or two pieces of clean underwear. Get what I need there, ship it back to me or recycle it. I can't do that this time because I'm one of the adults. I'm one of the people who actually has to be prepared. Further I have to have appropriate items on hand in case the kids forget or need something. 

Mostly I'm not looking forward to being tired and uncomfortable (from jet lag and sleep deprivation) in an unfamiliar place. I feel like I already paid my dues in that category. I trust that the experience will be better than I fear and I do feel tremendously lucky to get the chance to go. But you know how fear is. Right, completely unreasonable.