Tag Archives: home

The Act of Inverting

Posted on by under Guest, Memory & Place

I am in a new town, having finally made the first move of my life: 2,500 miles north to a place very different from what I’ve always called home.

On an old, oiled, well-marked wood floor, I practice a different style of yoga with a new teacher (although she has the same first name as my longtime teacher in the south). The studio is on the second story of a downtown office building that originally housed a hardware store. I position my mat in front of a window onto an alley, through which I can see a brick wall with beautiful patterns in it, a sky that is sometimes  blue and cloud-filled, sometimes gray and spitting, and a church spire. Crows remark upon my practice from the opposite gutter.

Today I lie on my back with my legs above me, against the wall. Now the window is on my right. This is the asana (or pose) called Viparita Karani, upside-down seal or “the action of inverting.” It is supposed to help with stress, headaches, and cramped or tired legs or feet, among other things. Today I am not particularly stricken with any of these maladies; I am simply following my teacher. But I have been here before. I close my eyes.

Five years ago: I am lying in legs-up-the-wall pose on the same yoga mat on a different and much newer wood floor, of lighter-colored wood, also on the second story, but in a newer building on a wide, busy street in Houston, Texas. Two walls of the studio are floor-to-ceiling glass, and earlier in summer and later in winter I watch the sun rise from this room at least one morning a week, in angry rain or transcendent color or pale haze. This class is very full; we are all very close to our neighbors. I brush hands with the woman on my left, turn my head in her direction, and smile. We clasp hands. Kristi now lives in Australia, and has a new baby I have not met. I miss her every time I practice yoga.

Three years ago: I am lying on a bed in a mid-rate hotel in Alexandria, Minnesota, with my legs up the wall. I have removed the pillow so that I can get right up against the bedframe, still not as close to the wall as I’d like, but close enough. I am wearing compression socks up to my knees after having just raced 100 miles on hilly gravel roads on my bicycle. It is my first bike race since knee surgery and I’ve done better than expected: it was a scenic ride, with friendly people, and I am blissful, transcendent. Superlatively drained and equally ecstatic, I hum with happy exhaustion. My husband lies to the left of me, in the same position. Our shoulders are touching. Soon we will get up and break down our bikes and pack them in boxes for the flight home, then go out for more food and celebratory beers. I will take a picture of the process, of the bike boxes open on the hotel bed, and comment that we have done this in more cheap hotels across the country than I can easily count.

Today I am in a new place, and I am lonely. I put my legs up the wall.

*   *   *   *   *

DSC_2393“The Act of Inverting” is by Julia Jenkins. Julia is a book reviewer, librarian, beer drinker, dog lover, mountain biker and native Texan now residing in Bellingham, Washington. She thinks a lot about concepts of place and home. Her favorite color is green.

The sign of windmills

Posted on by under Guest, Memory & Place

There’s a curve in the freeway, just where the old Dutch Windmill waves its cheerful arms at passers by. It is nestled on the eastern slopes of Cape Town’s table top mountain, a gentle arc of land once populated by quaggas but now home to students from every corner of the continent. The freeway snakes away from the city, and I knew each twist: hospital bend, the little plateau as the freeway parts into two, the slight rise before the arms of the windmill break into view on the left. Even my muscle memory knew the camber of the road, knowing just when to brake, just how much to nudge the steering wheel to take the corner gradually, before flicking on the indicators to signal my exit.

It happened one day, driving home just six weeks into a fledgling relationship, that I knew I would marry this man. He was not at all my type: quiet where I’d always dated extroverts, cautious where I’d formerly been drawn to confident certainty. Our first weeks of dating had been rocky, too: an old flame was in town and was causing trouble.

And yet, as I drove home from a stolen lunch of perfectly spiraled sushi rolls and contemplated the unlikeliness of it all, it was then I remembered a prayer I had prayed some years earlier: an uncomplicated prayer, that I would find someone who loved me for who I was, who loved God, and with whom I could talk and laugh. I cheekily added a fourth request: Please God, if it wasn’t too much to ask, could he be tall, too?

7307290624_d6aeb0dc08_zI laughed out loud at the memory, just as the windmill came into sight. No, he wasn’t the life of the party or a teller of jokes, but we certainly did laugh together. He wasn’t a reciter of sonnets or the maker of grand gestures, but his quiet patience in the midst of my ex-boyfriend-tornado spoke volumes of his commitment to me. Yes, he loved God, and—Oh God, you remembered!—he stretched six feet and two inches tall. A man to look up to, in every sense of the word.

The windmill bore witness to it all. I flicked on my turning signal, grinning to myself. I’d been slow to realize it, but this was the one with whom I could be silly and cranky, and who could see my fissures and not run. This was the one with whom I could grow old. I felt the winds of change and sensed a deep shift, a milling in my own soul.

I drove home that same route the next day, and the next, smiling each time I drove past that historic landmark, noting its milestone. Six months later I passed by my windmill in the passenger seat, this time dressed in white. I rested my hand on my new husband’s knee. “Do you see that windmill?” I asked. “This was where I first knew we would get married. Driving home. One day after eating sushi with you. And I just knew.”

He smiled and flicked on the indicator as we passed under the windmill’s shade. Ever as always, it signaled home.

*   *   *   *   *

bronwyn lea umbrella“The Sign of Windmills” is by Bronwyn Lea. Bronwyn and her husband married and moved from Cape Town to California, where they now live with their three littles. Bronwyn writes about the holy and hilarious at bronlea.com, as well as other online places like SheLoves, RELEVANT, the Huffington Post and Christianity Today’s Her.meneutics. She is a member of the Redbud Writers Guild. Occasionally, she gets back to South Africa and always makes sure to drive by the windmill (pictured above, photograph by Ian Barbour). Follow Bronwyn on Facebook and Twitter.

Stuck, Unstuck

Posted on by under Travel & Place

It was January—that moment when, in Michigan, you are still descending into the depths of winter. (Never mind that the days are getting longer, lighter.)

I was continuing to descend, too. My descent was more deceptive than winter’s—a postpartum swirl of hormones and emotions that could just as easily trick me into believing I was rising as falling. There were moments of brilliant sunshine on fresh blankets of snow, joyful baby squeals, and the sense that I had never quite been whole without this little one in my arms. In those moments I felt buoyed. Was the falling sensation I felt actually a rising—a trick of the mind?

No, that wasn’t the case. At least not in any comprehensive, lasting way.

It’s hard to say what exactly triggered me to finally shut down that January day—to batten the hatches, boarding up windows and barricading with sandbags as if to protect myself against a storm I had been watching move toward me. Now I know this about depression: the “what” or “why” hardly matters. It’s not as if identifying “what” means it could all be easily “fixed.” It just was what it was—a mix of chemicals and hormones, disappointments and anxieties, fear and regret, converging and swirling. And suddenly that day, that moment, I couldn’t keep up the charade that had kept me inching forward on previous days.

I could only sit, blankly. Sometimes with quiet tears forging new paths down my cheeks.

Finally, while my baby napped, I called my mom. I couldn’t speak, of course—couldn’t begin to explain a thing about what was happening inside me. But she still heard me, like mothers do. She heard the tears from 70 miles away, where she sat in my childhood home, and she knew I was stuck; she knew I needed to move.

“I’m coming to get you,” she said matter-of-factly, not asking or suggesting, only stating the fact in a way that allowed me to breathe a bit deeper.

So I sat as she drove to me through the frozen world. I don’t remember her arriving at my house, or helping me pack a few bags, transferring the baby’s carseat from my car to hers. I only remember the drive home—to the place I still considered home. I was, after all, only a decade removed from the time I had last lived there, the summer I was 19.

291654079_bc3cf3ce06_bMy mom had dark chocolate in her car, and as we traveled she told me to eat as much as I wanted—that it was good for me. She didn’t ask me to explain anything, didn’t ply me with questions or ask what I wanted or needed. She simply directed and gave, taking the wheel both literally and figuratively as she moved me from point A to point B.

As we traveled I felt the panic and confusion within me dislodge and begin to move downstream. I cracked open the shutters on my mind and began to take in where I was: The warmth of the car and bitter-sweetness of the chocolate. The beauty of the snow stretching out from either side of the two-lane highway—the way it was whimsical decorating the evergreens, and then sophisticated blanketing the ground, seeming to change color as it rose on hills and dipped into valleys, the late afternoon sun slanting onto its smooth surfaces.

I took in the one-stoplight towns in a way I never had before, even though I’d passed through them dozens of times behind the wheel of my own car. There were people on the sidewalks, bundled against the cold: a mother walking slowly as her snowsuited toddler kicked his boots through the snow; a group of three teenage girls who seemed to meander and stall, in spite of the cold.

The towns were then behind us, the speed limit rose, and I saw the sad, sinking homes down along the river, a man getting out of his rusted truck, pulled up alongside a satellite dish. Closer to home, the terrain flattened, presenting farm houses and sleeping winter fields. There was nothing remarkable along that stretch of road—no one, I imagine, living remarkable lives. There were just lives, and I noticed them as my mother carried me along.

Toward the end of our journey she told me a story about when she was a young mom—not to say “I know exactly how you feel,” but just, I suppose, to broaden my perspective and help me see beyond the walls of my confining mind, just as putting me in the car helped me to see beyond the walls of my house, my life, which had become too small.

What my mother knew, what she taught me, is that becoming “unstuck” involves some form of moving, traveling, even if you don’t know exactly where you need to go.

 

Good to Be Home?

Posted on by under Travel & Place

It’s always the same, coming home from a vacation–that last block before our house.

We drive up the hill, and turn under a canopy of locust trees. On our left, there’s the big rhododendron bush, the vacant duplex with the colorful window frames, two red brick rentals, and grass. On the right, there’s trash tucked into the undergrowth, and sometimes a neighborhood deer, nosing through a discarded fast food bag.

“Boo!” I might say to the deer. And if the leftovers aren’t that fascinating, the deer might even look up. City deer are never afraid; I could yell, “We’ve been away! For weeks. We were really far away. Didn’t you miss us?”

And if deer could roll their big doe eyes, she just might. But instead we drive on, pulling up in front of our house.

Home! Finally, we’re home. But how can coming home feel so familiar and so surreal, all at the same time?

* * * * *

Several years ago we made the adventurous (or foolish) decision to drive to New Orleans with a three and a five year old. There and back again, with overnights at a friends’ house in Charlotte and a cabin in the northeastern Alabama woods, it was about thirty-five hours of driving.

And after thirty-five hours of the Veggie-Tales CD, let me tell you, we were ready to come home. But as we drove that familiar last block (no deer that night), waved to our neighbors, and greeted our black cat, something wasn’t quite right.

It was as if we had never left. But we had. After two weeks and two thousand miles, our eyes were now accustomed to new sights and unfamiliar places. I felt uneasy in the old and familiar.

Strange.

But there wasn’t much time for reflection. Instead, there were tasks–get the girls in bed, empty the cooler, take off the bikes. Home quickly became a to-do list. Our room was the aftermath of our two-weeks-previous packing tornado. The girls room was worse. A Goodwill trip, perhaps a dumpster, was in order. I suddenly became nostalgic about living out of suitcases.

It was home. It was really overwhelming.

5861512547_e3e80f63b3_oTime had passed, things had changed, but the same skirt that I had rejected while packing was still sitting on my bed. I regarded it as a foreign object–the North Carolina mountains seemed nearer. Was it only a week ago that I biked the streets of New Orleans? And that lovely cabin in Alabama… I could almost smell the pine trees. Were all of these places and moments just postcards and photographs now?

I threw the skirt off the bed and lay down.

* * * * *

The next morning I had some coffee in the backyard. The chickens were doing their chicken-y things in the run, the kids were swinging under the magnolia tree,  and the sun was shining through everything green.

It was good to be home.

Eventually I slowed down enough to remember one of my favorite quotes. From G.K. Chesterton. The words rippled through my head as I sipped from my warm mug, stilling me.

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us. 

Ah… here was a key. I took another sip.

The thing about coming home is that it is work. Good work. But it is not only the work of unpacking, laundry and trying to find the darn cellphone charger. It’s not just returning to my email inbox, catching up at the office, or purging excess stuff. Coming home is also the work of figuring out what my experiences of far-away places will mean in my close-to-home places.

Coming home is allowing myself to be different than I was, and giving the left-inside things room to grow. And as I sat there, under the same magnolia tree, surrounded by the same neighbors and the same city deer, gearing up to clean my room, I sighed and smiled.

“There’d better be some new things in there,” I thought, laying a hand on my breastbone as if I might feel something move. “Two thousand miles is a long was to go for some postcards.”

 

Postcard picture by Else-Marla Tennessen 

True love travels

Posted on by under Travel & Place

My take on “true love” is this: You can’t be sure it’s true until you’ve traveled together.

When Jason and I were planning our honeymoon, months before we even got on the plane, I knew the two of us made a great match.

For instance, there was no argument about what should be our top priority in deciding which country to go to. Of course it would be cuisine.

After running a variety of potential honeymoon locations through the cuisine filter, we began discussing what we might want to do with our time besides cook and eat (and, um, sleep). Our second priority, we agreed, was being in a place where we could simultaneously relax and absorb culture. We wouldn’t have to leave a resort or cruise ship to go off in search of whatever it was that might make the place “ethnic” and unique. There wouldn’t be a checklist of “must-sees” to work through—no posing for pictures by each iconic sight to prove we had indeed been there. We wanted to simply be—to do everyday things we love to do at home, like read, sit outside at cafes and talk, cook together, take walks at sunset—but in a completely different place.

With healthy doses of self-control, that type of travel experience can be had just about anywhere, but we wanted to go someplace where we wouldn’t even feel lured into a trap of tourist rushing and doing, checking train schedules, packing our bags and moving from one hotel to another in an attempt to “see it all.” Our choice would completely eliminate the possibility of people later saying, “You went to [fill in the country] and you didn’t go see [fill in the artwork, cathedral, city, castle, etc.]???”

OiaviewClearly, that narrowed our list down to a very easy choice: to honeymoon on a small Greek island.

And on that small island, we chose a town high up on the cliffs—one without a port large enough to handle passing cruise ships, or roads wide enough for tourist buses.

And in that small town, we chose to stay in a small, kitchen-equipped apartment carved right into those cliffs (locally known as “cave houses”).

And there, in and around our small cave, overlooking the Caldera and the sea, we went about our everyday lives in a completely new way.

donkeysOia (pronounced ee-ah) on the island Santorini has the perfect mix of everything and nothing: winding, narrow lanes and walks with room only for pedestrians and the donkeys that transport loads too heavy for people; local craftspeople and shops, complete with the town’s collection of sweet stray dogs napping in the sun; markets selling local yogurt, figs, wine, honey, eggs, cheese, and olives; and views of the sea and sunsets that take your breath away.

What Oia doesn’t have was just as important to our experience there. It doesn’t have room for motor vehicles of any kind beyond the town perimeter—certainly not for any loud construction vehicles (which means there are no large hotels or multi-storied buildings). It didn’t (in 2007, at least) have wireless Internet (and the cell phones we had at the time were useless there). And it doesn’t have a list of must-see sights (unless you count the sun setting over the Caldera).

It was quiet. It was gorgeous. We could be at home there, yet it was very different from home.

kitchenetteIn the mornings we drank coffee and ate farm eggs, or yogurt and figs on our porch, still in our pajamas, idly talking about what we might want to do that day, if anything.

Later, we strolled through town, trying a local restaurant for lunch when our stomachs began to grumble, followed by, perhaps, a longer walk into the countryside, or time with books, coffee and sweets on the terrace. Often we napped in the cool, dimness of our honeymoon cave.

cookingdinnerThe only rule that seemed to guide us was more like an anti-rule: an unspoken agreement that we would make things up as we went along. Sometimes a trip to the market would inspire a dinner made in our kitchenette. Other times a restaurant we had discovered on a walk earlier that day would be tempting us by evening. Dinners were long and leisurely, and each day ended the same way: with the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon.

We have since taken other trips together—including some less leisurely and more scripted than our trip to Santorini. But the ease by which we plan and embark on travels together has continued to be a hallmark of the compatibility in our marriage—one that not only allows us to bond and feel refreshed by our travel experiences, but also spills over into how we travel together through life.

 

kiss

Moments from The Open Road

Posted on by under Travel & Place

“Mind if I add deer meat to the burger?”

Sitting out on the porch overlooking the large garden and the stunning Appalachian Mountains, I didn’t mind at all. I rocked back and forth absorbing the beauty of the life my friends had created. Their 7-year old entertained me with a story about a box car race which she had recently won. A large piece of metal sculpture fashioned by the artistic hands of her dad was just on the edge of my vision.  The clouds and the mountains and the storm and the trees created a ever-changing, ever-the-same view.

From the mushrooms they planted in a stack of wood to the tractor seat that served as the swing set, I soaked in their life. We chatted with joy about the little one who was growing, still hidden in mommy’s tummy, and looked with reverence at the small momentos that give witness to the little ones they had lost along the way.

After dinner, we pulled the bed out of the sleeper sofa and knelt by the edge of their children’s bunkbed to say prayers. The cool mountain air coming in the window and the house creaking with quiet noises, I settled in to the peace of their small mountain home. In the morning, the sound of bread-making roused me from restful sleep.

A loving whisper gently filled the silence, “It’s time to get ready for school, sweetheart.”

I folded two dollar bills and slipped them into the tip can. “Can you do Danny’s Song?,” I asked. Just in case, I sang my favorite line at full voice, “Even though we ain’t got money…” He had a startled look for a moment, probably not a typical request.

“Yah.  Absolutely.” He fiddled with a gadget, something that provided the words and the chords.

I had spent the afternoon rambling through Savannah, exploring and snapping photos of interesting patterns and angles. Where the strap met my sweaty skin, my sandals had  rubbed large raw spots across the top of my feet. Every step was painful.

Hot, sweaty, and footsore, I became attuned to the couples. They were everywhere. I slipped into a mini-funk, a grumpster state. Sitting on a bench, I fiddled with my phone, not ready to go back to my hotel room but unable to keep walking. Nobody answered.

Casually dressed and with tousled hair, he was singing and playing guitar at the bar & grill on the corner of the square. It was the perfect blend of country and folk and soulful melodies. I sat and listened for over an hour, my heart slowly lulled into a happier state. Eventually, I mustered the courage to go and sit at a table. And with dinner ordered and a beer drank, I mustered the courage to make a song request.

“You bring a tear of joy to my eye and tell me everything is gonna be alright.”

When he sang the chorus, big, inexplicable tears rolled down my check.  They were the tears of a beautiful moment, part of which I had created and part of which I had been given.  Tears of gratitude and heartache, of goodness and beauty.

My heart, long asleep, stirred.

Although suffering the effects of a rotten cold, my joyful friend greeted the day with her typical morning vibrance, “DisneyWorld, here we come!”

I drug myself out of morning fog and with the enthusiasm that I could muster in the morning, replied, “Whoo-hoo!”

As I thought about completion of graduate school, I had gotten it my head that I wanted to see the Magic Kingdom on my way home. Florida is not really on the way to Arizona but I didn’t care. When we realized that she would be in Florida for a graduation, it sealed the deal. By temperament, she’s a planner and so, we made plans months in advance. I messed it up and arrived a day early. Whoops.

It could have been weird. I was on the pull-out couch in a large hotel room with my long-time friend and her newly-wed husband. But, it wasn’t. I was tempted to be weirded out by the the lack of weirdness but instead, accepted it in gratitude. As the two had become one at the altar, I had gained a new friend.

We arrived at the theme park, googling “How to Use a Fast Pass” as we made our way to the entrance. With cold symptoms at their peak, we knew we only had a few hours before exhaustion won out. We tapped into the efficiency skills at hand and came up with a plan. In between the plan, we had spontaneous moments, ducking into the less thrilling attractions which were flooded with childhood memories and children.

It was an easy day. A day of innocent entertainment, deep friendships, and celebration of happy things. A day where goodness triumphed.

My melancholic soul was light-hearted and unafraid.

I’m not sure the attraction of a rambling solo road trip but it definitely calls to me. Whenever I can, I choose the smaller scenic roads, marked by a dotted line on the old-school atlas lodged between the seats of my car. I would rather go slow and be bathed in nature–the Shenandoah Valley, the Ozarks, the open sky of my beloved Southwest.  Or, go out of my way to have a quick visit with a friend.

The stretches of open road and the moments in between teach me. Home. Beauty. Lightness. On the road, there is just enough going on that you can be in your head without focusing on being in your head.  You can look back on moments and see their depth. That’s a sweet spot for me.

Days ago, my road trip ended as I drove up the dirt driveway of my childhood place–the home that my father built around us as we grew. Now, in the rhythm of regular life, I am trying to build new habits, to remember new ways. I have returned home

…at least until another road opens up in front of me.11078154_10153371527107943_3090907364091819517_n

Alone in the City Again

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Guest

In one of the final moments my Chicago community gathered together, I knelt on a swiveling armchair and squeezed my shoulders in next to Caitlyn and Ben’s.  We peered out the window in the boys’ Logan Square apartment; its angle pointed to the intersection of Kedzie and Schubert Ave where rain fell on the aftermath of a car crash.

Alone in the City AgainThe crash had thrown a cooler from the back of a truck, and now, the contents of a summer picnic spilled on the pavement. The doors of the truck remained open, the driver long since run away.

As sirens bent around buildings toward the scene, the sky opened to sheets of water and timpani thunder. Spectators hurried inside, looking back over their shoulders, hoping to catch a last glimpse of the action. Maybe like me, they found it easier to look on the wreckage of someone else’s life than to face their own.

Lord, I don’t want to be alone in the city again.

There were eight of us, expatriates of our college suburb in some stopgap Alone in the City Again 2time between college and the rest of life: six boys who lived together in Logan Square, their around the block neighbor Caitlyn, and myself.

My first year in Chicago, I fell into the trap of urban loneliness; it is easy to remain anonymous in a city—wake up, go to work, return to your little compartment, and shut the door behind you, waiting for an invitation to join the bustle. I was a first year teacher, falling asleep to episodes of “Mad Men” at 7:30 p.m., clinging to perceptions that I could not “fit in” with the cool kids.

By my second year in the city, my unhappiness persuaded me to try something different; I resolved to fashion Chicago into a home. I began to invite people over, rationalizing that perhaps others wanted someone to organize togetherness as much as I did.

With fluttering heart beats and shallow breath, I pushed all the chairs in my apartment into the living room and rigged up a digital antenna to broadcast the 2012 summer Olympics. Amidst my good intentions were less noble feelings of desperation: “like me,” “love me,” “stay with me.”

Talking myself into courage, I clung to a Field Of Dreams like promise that if I built the parties, meals, and traditions, the community would gather. And it did.

In summer, friends propped themselves on pillows that leaned against the rails of the back porch. We watched movies on a wobbly projector screen, and I served bowls filled with stove-popped popcorn drizzled with browned butter and rosemary. The boys came over to my apartment with ravenous appetites and cases of PBR. They recited compliments and “mmmms” around the table, sons of polite mothers.

We lived a sitcom city life, but I soon realized I had built a foundation of cement for a shantytown. The others talked about leaving, about futures beyond the walls of the city. I began to panic. What was wrong with Chicago? What was wrong with me?

On one afternoon, we draped a picnic blanket over the boys’ front steps. I sliced Brie and apples, arranging them on a plate to eat with a baguette and glasses of red wine. The conversation drifted towards careers and futures. Tim mentioned moving to Denver and my heart lurched.

Caitlyn suggested an exodus to her home state of California. Ben proposed working in his cousin’s bookstore in Portland. I tried not to scream, “Why not here?” Instead, I cried on the car ride home.

I felt like a little girl begging her parents not to leave her with a babysitter; if I could have clung to their legs as they tried to drag their feet out of the city, I would have.

At one of our three 1920s parties, I hung my head back, warm with gin, and listened to the lullaby of our conversation. Marty argued with another friend about the Meyers Briggs of Jesus, and Caitlyn and Andrew made the floor moan and creak with their dancing. I knew that we had become something together. With such bounty, maybe no one would ever leave.

Please God, let no one ever leave.

But tonight with the news that Tim had an interview in Washington D.C., I finally gave myself permission to take inventory of our dwindling social circle. Tonight we were together for Caitlyn’s farewell. Andrew left in May for another continent, and Ben would leave by the end of the month for Grand Rapids. Others cast their lines towards new horizons, waiting for any tug towards something different. Already there had been garage sales and exchanges of items that couldn’t fit in moving trucks.

I strung my problems together, making them into one giant demon that tormented me with questions and fears. Suddenly the boys leaving meant I shouldn’t take risks, that all my prospects for marriage would be over, that I could not discern the whispers of God’s will, that I had proved unworthy of love and ended up a failure. I grafted each of these things to the paths my friends took away from the city, away from me.

Daniel played Beethoven’s seventh symphony as two tow trucks pulled the wreckage of the crash away in different directions. The thunderstorm, the car crash, and then a silent ride home with Tim—signs and wonders denoting the end. I wanted the city to swallow me into its dark belly.

I forgot how lonely the city could feel at night.

*****

Meredith Bazzoli“Alone in the City Again” was written by Meredith Bazzoli. Meredith has spent her whole life orbiting around Chicago and its suburbs. She currently resides just west of the city with her husband Drew, who grew up a hoosier. She never thought she could marry one of those. Meredith writes, performs improv comedy, and teaches in West Garfield Park (all stories for another day). She seeks to start conversations about the life we stuff under the bed and keep off our Instagram feeds.

You can connect with her at www.veryrevealing.com

Black and white photos from the night in the essay by Daniel Saunders.

Refuge

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Guest

As a nine-year old recent refugee I often felt lonely. The kids at school, taking their queue from ubiquitous images of famine-stricken Ethiopian children with protruding stomachs and flies milling around their eyes, referred to me as Starving Ethy—Ethy being short for Ethiopian. The school often isolated me, with other aliens, in a special class they called English as a Second Language. When not at school, I spent most of my time alone, roaming the neighborhood, scavenging for odds and ends, finding the occasional Garbage Pail Kids trading card or a broken Transformers figurine.

Yet my family and I were not alone. Like many other refugees before them, Eritreans in the U.S. had begun to conform to an old pattern. The first group arrived in a specific city by design. They resettled there as part of a grand scheme cooked up in the mind of civil servants sitting in a conference room somewhere. These special refugee programs preselected some location in the U.S. that they thought made sense for the refugees. And these displaced people didn’t know any better. Des Moines is San Diego. San Diego is Des Moines. It’s all the same to those simply trying to escape calamity.

But once the trauma of transition abates and with the gift of time, these immigrants grow familiar with their new homeland. They also grow restless. They long to be with people like them. They are drawn to DC by an old friend from the refugee camps in Sudan, to Seattle by a neighbor from the village back home, to San Diego by a former fellow rebel-fighter. Mostly though, they are simply glad to cluster their lives around other Eritreans. These people, in their search for more than refuge, shift and move; drawn to each other to dull the bite of loneliness.

It is through this familiar road that a growing number of Eritreans made their way to Atlanta. It is why a room full of Eritreans greeted my mom and me during one of our routine visits to one of these Eritrean families on one sunny and beautiful afternoon. The home, a unit at one of the local public housing properties, was overflowing with strangers, old friends, and cousins of cousins.

After the customary cheek-to-cheek greetings, my mom joined the other adults who were dutifully occupied by a coffee tradition that must date back to the beginning of time. All the guests sat together outside on the porch in a semi-circle with the hostess at the juncture and a brazier at her side.

5543145597_017e65feb6_zLike the old priests and their censers, the hostess filled the air with the scent of roasting coffee, giving each guest the occasion to waft and savor the aroma rising from the roasting pan. She ground the beans and carefully poured them into the jebena, a special kettle made of clay. After adding a cup or so of water, she placed the jebena on the brazier to work its heat as the ancient taste brewed with slow serenity. When it was time, she slowly filled each finjal, small ceramic drinking cups decorated with beautiful patterns in different colors, moving continuously from cup to cup until the circle was complete.

It was a well-choreographed ritual wrapped in a thick blanket of gossip, debate and gloating, each adult trying to outflank the other with their better tales and more exciting news. They moved from topic to topic, sometimes with rambunctious energy and sometimes with solemn prayer depending on the mood of each issue — all of this they consumed with wide open hearts, as they sipped their scrupulously prepared coffee. While the adults sat on the porch consumed by their disputations, I joined the kids playing out in the field an earshot away.

In many ways these interactions are perfectly symbolic of the solitude we all felt in that place. A white American friend once described a moment she’d experienced in Shanghai, China. After living there for years, she ran into a black man, the first speckle of diversity she’d seen in a long time, while strolling along at some shopping district. As soon as she spotted him, she ran over and asked if she could give him a hug, explaining that he reminded her of home. The stranger obliged.

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Biniam“Refuge” was written by Biniam Gebre. Biniam is a former refugee from Eritrea, a beautiful and young country in East Africa. He is also the former acting Commissioner of the the Federal Housing Administration. Both in his professional life and personal struggles, he is in constant search to understand the meaning of place. He currently lives in Washington D.C. Biniam blogs at Choices and Values and can be found on Twitter @biniamgebre.

Photo of the jebena, above, is by Canned Muffins.

Wherever I’m With You

Posted on by under Guest, Together in Place

My parents left Pittsburgh when I was a toddler, but family lore still recalls me pointing delightedly at its blue and white bus stop signs, imploring, “Stop, bus!” Several times a year we returned, crossing the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the Tubes to visit my Grandma, whose porch housed a galvanized dairy box, although the milkman had long since ceased service by then. On rainy Sundays, my brother and I chased pigeons outside Downtown’s gothic Presbyterian church. Inside we slid down inexplicably existent bowling lanes and sat for children’s sermons at the same poinsettia-laden altar where our parents married years before.

The Steel City coaxed me back for a longer stay the summer before my senior year of college. At the North Side’s Pittsburgh Project, I learned more about justice over three months in community than I had in all my years in the classroom or church. Daily navigating a mysterious tangle of neighborhoods, armed with plucky determination and a stack of MapQuest print outs, my teammates and I discovered how many Pittsburgh “roads” are merely stairwells and how true is the saying, “You can’t get there from here.” I savored my first cherry ice ball from Gus and Yia Yia’s historic cart and discovered the public radio gem that is WYEP.

pghMy official Pittsburgh homecoming occurred the following summer. One week before our wedding and freshly hired at a church mere blocks from the hospital where I was born, Jim and I arrived to scout any apartment within reach of our meager summer camp paychecks: decrepit student housing in Oakland, dingy curiosities in Polish Hill, and an alleged one-bedroom in Friendship consisting of a dark kitchenette and one tiny bathroom atop a stairwell. (The split landing was apparently where a mattress was to go.)

When we discovered a third floor walk-up in a brick Bloomfield row house, we knew our little family of two had come home to the East End at last. Boasting a sunny kitchen outfitted in fifties-era fixtures and compact appliances, Hobbit ceilings, and actual sleeping quarters, the apartment felt palatial at $325 a month. So what if it was accessible only by fire escape and lacked a bedroom door? The Shire was ours, and God bless the youth group parents who dropped off teenagers in the back alley for dinners and movie nights. Great is your reward and greater our memories: climbing out of Allegheny Cemetery that time we got locked in, ice skating and frisbee at Schenley, and cheering graduation at the Mellon Arena.

We owned one car, two bikes, and most everything we needed (excepting perhaps a washer-dryer or savings account). Jim still remembers bike messaging as his favorite job; I remember the way my breath caught when he said he’d been hit by a car and how nearly every dollar he earned seemed to end up at Kraynick’s Bike Shop. We slid down the icy fire escape taking out the trash, walked to Tram’s for pho, and biked downtown to see Wilco at the Point. I celebrated a series of birthdays along Forbes, marching against the Iraq war alongside aging hippies, anarchists, and once, a donkey.

In the Cultural District, we scored rush tickets to RENT, not far from Planned Parenthood where I got my annual exam. Neither Jim nor I dressed up for work, but when we scored free symphony tickets, you know we turned up in our finest at Heinz Hall. We once sat behind playwright August Wilson at a tiny Lawrenceville performance of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and the only other man I ever saw naked was an actor in a cordoned-off warehouse at the edge of the Strip. The audience shivered on metal bleachers in wool coats and gloves, our breath visible beneath the heat lamps, and he took a shower right there in front of us.

Cockroaches and an absentee slumlord eventually drove us further up Liberty Avenue to an apartment atop Mariani’s Pleasure Bar, where the crashing trash pick-up woke us each morning at three, and the bells at St. Joseph’s called the faithful to prayer. I couldn’t begin to add up how much money we spent on parking tickets or tiramisu from Groceria Italiano next door. From our sticky tar roof, we hosted confirmation classes and friends for hibachi-grilled chicken, and we watched fireworks, movie crews, and bocce tournaments: broke, happy, and in love with each other and our skyline.

It’s been ten years since our exodus for pastures only literally greener, but my heart still races at the sight of yellow bridges and Rick Sebak documentaries, and the memory of rush hour bike commutes along Craig Street. There’s no place like home and no home like between the Three Rivers.

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avi feb 2015“Wherever I’m With You” was written by Suzannah Paul. Suzannah is a Pennsylvania-based religion writer on the topics of liberation theology and embodied faith. When not squeezed into a summer camp dining hall, Suzannah and her family set extra places at their farmhouse table, and she writes love letters to the broken, beautiful Church at The Smitten Word.

 

The Sunshine State

Posted on by under Guest, Season & Place

Florida has two seasons: summer and January. And flip flops can (and should) be worn during both.

Cradled between the Atlantic Ocean and its more laidback cousin, the Gulf of Mexico, it quietly putters along while the states above it tromp through seasons and mark time in the usual fashion. Like Peter Pan’s Neverland, Florida is a green, sun-soaked playground where April is indistinguishable from October and a staggering array of flowers blossom year-round between gumbo-limbo trees and cabbage palms.

Jax BeachTo a nine-year-old child like me, born in the grubby northeast corner of Arkansas, Florida was a revelation—a land of limitless azure skies filled with cotton candy clouds and a salt-tinged breeze. I spent days hunting for sharks’ teeth at Venice Beach, trail riding through acres of slash pines and saw palmettos (always on the lookout for fat yellow spiders), tubing the Ichetucknee River, and prospecting for balls in the water hazards that dotted the state’s ubiquitous manicured golf courses.

Though I grew up, the landscape changed much more gradually than I did. Sadly, once empty property is now filled with the ubiquitous, inescapable trappings of modern society—chain restaurants and grocery stores. Gas stations and home improvement warehouses. A Starbucks on every corner. But my elementary school, the place where I learned about Seminole Indians and fell in love with C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, is still there, a larger parking lot and bike corral its only signs of growth.

My grandparents’ home is still there too, a two-story structure of weatherworn bricks surrounded by a sun-bleached and slightly warped wooden fence. It’s the place where I perfected my backstroke in their kidney-shaped pool and lazed away the afternoon on a lounge chair, a bowl of Schwann’s rocky road ice cream in my lap. The place where we celebrated countless Christmases and birthdays and where my aunt and uncle—and later my husband and I—were wed by my great uncle James in front of the coquina fireplace in the living room.

In a state where the Fountain of Youth burbles away, The Mouse still turns a brisk trade in his Magic Kingdom, and the seasons never change, it’s all too easy to forget that time isn’t a renewable resource and that, for everyone who lives there, it will eventually run out.

Between the home I love and the school I remember is a small structure—one that has served both as a law office and a police sub-station. But it is now an assisted living facility for people who have dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, and my grandfather is one of the people who calls it home.

Like the beach he once enjoyed, which is siphoned grain by grain back into the sea, he is being pulled away from us by the tide of time. And there is no regaining what has been eroded, no reclamation project that can bring him back. It’s a hard truth to witness in a place filled with the delightful lie of endless sunshine.

I now live in Georgia and experience the passing of time as others do—season by season. Summer lingers longer here than it does most places, and autumn is far shorter than I’d like. There is winter too, a span of months where leaves wither and fall into doleful piles, leaving their trees naked and exposed to the same cold winds that slice through my bones no matter how many layers of clothing I pile on.

But because I experience those bitter months, I’m all the more appreciative of the spring that is sure to follow. I want to cheer when the Japanese Red Maple in my front yard once again dons its ruby-colored cloak and my husband’s bees begin the work of restocking their hives. Witnessing it all has helped me accept that for everything there is indeed a season, a time for everything under heaven. What is born will die. What is planted will be plucked up. I will weep and mourn at times, yes, but I will also have cause laugh and dance again. And one day, I’ll live in a land that knows no seasons and where death no longer holds sway.

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Jamie A. Hughes“The Sunshine State” was written by Jamie A. Hughes. Jamie is a writer, editor, and unapologetic St. Louis Cardinals fanatic who currently lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband and two needy cats. A former high school teacher, she now works as the managing editor of In Touch Magazine and is struck dumb by her good fortune. She blogs at tousledapostle.com and can be found on Twitter @tousledapostle.