Longing for other worlds, pandemic relationships, & space-brain
And public parks that make me cry
I can smell the woodpile outside our house burning. The accumulation of dried brush, old leaves, and a tree felled a few months ago. The bonfire crackles in the smoky, damp evening, and suddenly, my stomach lurches, and I’m flung back across the ocean, across time, to Indiana cornfields. To pumpkins and to leaves so flaming bright it turns everyone giddy, as they decorate themselves in scarves and their front porches in scarecrows and ghosts and jack-o-lanterns. There are no real autumn colors here in South Africa, where I live. There is a difference in the air, though, come fall. It turns crisp; there’s twinkling frost some mornings, and the beginning of bright, blinding blue sky days. And just like that, I’m lurched back to the present, to the bonfire and my two children running back and forth to toss new twigs onto the blaze.
This happens to me often, having grown up between two countries in two different hemispheres. Christmas memories of snow and jingle bells. Christmas memories of sprinklers and watermelon. Christmas memories of laying in swimming pools while dreaming of ice skating and snowmen. It all reminds me of Christmas.
And because it was my childhood, it’s mine. I’ve always had the blessing of experiencing both realities, and always had the accompanying ache for whichever world I’d left.
Laughing at a Thanksgiving full of friends and roast chicken in South Africa one minute, then pausing at the hitch in my throat, thinking about real turkeys and all my scattered extended family gathered in the U.S. without me. Feeling nostalgic at Easter for the three-day long isiZulu services full of music that were my childhood, while also feeling relieved that our American church services only last an hour before the egg hunts for Reese's peanut butter cups.
I remember a saying, growing up: “Wherever you are, be all there,” attributed to Jim Eliot, Patron Saint of Intense Missionaries. It was said to the new arrivals, as a way to help them accept their reality. Build new relationships. Practice gratitude. Cut the never-ending, whiny comparisons. And there was a bit of self-righteous holiness to it, as well. The good missionaries sacrificially adapt, giving up the familiar world for the new one. Pack your clothes in your coffin. Burn the bridge between your world and this one.
….
You can read the whole thing here (It’s an essay I wrote for a specific place (that rejected it!) and some pieces just seem so specific that I can’t re-work them into some other article. So, here it is for you to enjoy on my blog! I’ve been thinking about this essay a lot lately as I’ve been visiting family (see below) and seeing my children experience things I experienced growing up on trips to the USA.
Tiny life update:
Hey! I’ve kind of fallen off the face of the internet for a while because I’ve been travelling this month seeing family in the USA. For those of you who don’t know, I was born and grew up in South Africa, but my parents are American, and I married a Minnesotan I met in college in Indiana in the USA. We’ve lived most of our married life in South Africa, but we are normally able to visit family in the states about every year. So, I just survived a 24 hour flight/transit with two children aged 4 and almost 2 (still a lap infant! Save that money!) alone, in a pandemic. My husband is hopefully joining us in a week or so- which means I won’t have to do it alone again (and I’ll be vaccinated this time around). The trip was actually not as bad as it sounds, exhausting, but no major meltdowns or screaming fits. I feel incredibly conflicted about both travelling internationally and getting vaccinated when people our age in South Africa will be waiting a long time for a vaccine… but on the other hand, I’m so thankful to get to be with family after so long.
Traveling to the states for these summer visits always seems to wipe my brain totally clean. We have no routine, just following the structure of whichever relatives we are living with, the only pin-points being the long lost friends and relative meet-ups we are trying to fit in. I feel like I couldn’t really write anything if I tried, my brain is like a balloon barely hanging onto my shoulders, just bobbing in the breeze. If I try to be productive it’s stressful, but if I just accept it and enjoy the blue sky, it’s fine? I think maybe this is what summer always feels like for Americans? Or maybe it’s what parenting small children feels like for most people?
In the place of a normal newsletter, enjoy the essay up on the blog, and the poem below. No links this time, but a list of things me and my kids are loving about the states (in no particular order):
squirrels, garbage trucks, fire trucks, and sidewalks
lucky charm cereal, root beer, Oreos
Staying up far past my bedtime with my siblings for long catch ups
Public spaces that are used by the public: parks, sidewalks, splash pads… I literally tear up every time we go to the downtown park and see all the people from all over the city coming together and playing. This is not an exaggeration. Actual tears.
I’m sure I’ll have all. The. Thoughts. About our tiny house life after living in the states for a month, so stay tuned :)
Some poems:
Uncommon Grace
Some days,
Goodness seems so far away,
Buried under ordinary sadness
and meanness and irritations,
(By which I mean the internet).
But,
I saw a grey-haired man today.
Delighted,
His face glowing,
His t-shirt emblazoned with "GRANDPA"
Like a banner over his heart,
Cradeling a jacket, a towel, sunscreen, and a diet Coke,
Chuckling at his grandson jumping in a fountain in a public park.
I will not take this for granted again.
This, being a witness
To light.
(Steph.e.writes)
Music
My piano teacher once said
When we perform, we should memorise our music.
Repeat. Repeat. Again, again,
Until we don't think
And our hands just move through the rhythm.
It feels strange, empty,
The notes on the page just
Dots and lines
All hollowed out of meaning
After all this time.
I think of this, as I open my bible,
Black and White dots on the page
Reading my child stories we don't understand,
Storms and healing, and body and blood
Empty and strange
Again and again,
Repeat, repeat.
But I also think, sometimes,
Of slipping onto a cool piano bench
And suddenly the music is a thing that understands me,
that fills me up,
And after all this time,
I'm not reciting, I'm telling
a story my fingers already know,
awash in colour,
All hallowed.
(@Steph.e.writes)