"You're Still Young"

"You're still young. You have plenty of time."

It's a disconcerting thing to hear at the end of a conversation where you've been talking about being single versus being married.

Plenty of time for what? To bear children? To find love and marry? To grow up? Please don't tell me I'm a kid. Even if you think it's true, I'm not having it. Biologically, I'm well into my adulthood, and anthropologically, I'm already elderly.

It doesn't feel like there's plenty of time. Minutes slip by, and some things are no longer an option. There's not plenty of time to become a ballet dancer. That ship had sailed, and I'm literally too old for it.

I'm living my life, and glad I've made the choices I have. My life has been about a lot of things: fear and understanding, estrangement and belonging. There's a list that could go on.

It's clear that my life has not been about getting married and having children. Maybe it will be someday, and maybe not. But I don't see it as my endgame, that's all. I still need love and family, and I'm so serious about this when I say I have found my eternal love, and I have an eternal family. It's Jesus Christ, and his church. 

More Steps In Each Process

Nothing is ever simple. I want to be clear about this, and make no mistake: I don't resent the long processes I've had to go through for things I have heretofore taken for granted. I'm just noticing, that's all. I'm noticing the many many steps it takes when you have to do it for the first time in a new place. Cooking vegetables, washing clothes, putting up curtains. Each a strange and separate victory.

I wanted to eat some vegetables, so Stacey and I found the market. I wrongfully accused the vendor of not returning enough change; we bought the vegetables and left. Walked home, chopped vegetables. Got out a pan. The stove didn't work. So we learned how to turn on the gas for the stove, and how to light the pilot light. This was a complicated process, since the pilot light wasn't in its usual place for me, and I don't know anything about stoves to begin with. I was able to accomplish my goal of eating cooked vegetables, it just took all evening, a few tools, and a few risks.

Next, I wanted to wash clothes. I examined the washer, and thought I figured out the settings. But the water still had to be turned on manually. When it did start, it took three hours. I guess I chose the you'll-be-elderly-when-this-is-over setting.

My room has been in desperate need of curtains. One day this week, I found a store with some possibilities, but I realized I had to measure the windows first. Today I went to Ikea with some other teachers, and bought curtains that are somewhat too long, I found. But the real problem was how to put them up. The ceiling is eight feet high, and the rod is at the top. What's more, in order to put curtains directly on the rod, presumably one has to remove the fixture from the wall. Nope. I solved that problem by employing shower curtain rings. 

I solved the height problem by moving the coffee table to my bedroom, placing a chair on the coffee table (all sturdier than it sounds), realizing I didn't have enough shower curtain rings, going to two stores for shower curtain rings, coming home and finishing the job, then eating leftover cooked vegetables. One feat at a time, please.

Market

Stacey and I went out today to explore our neighborhood. It was a multi-dimensional trip, filled with optimism. We wanted to learn the neighborhood, buy an outrageously long list that included a doormat and a particular type of water filter, and to end the trip with smoothies. All of this sounded feasible in our minds.

We found the shops, and entered one with lots of shampoo in the window. Many men were rushing in and out. Inside, to the right were shampoos of all sorts, and to the left, wine of all sorts. Maybe liquor, too? We got caught up in a tide of leaving men, and saw no more. Shampoo is stupid, anyway, and we didn't need it that badly.

Next, a hardware store, in the front of which were stacked plastic containers of all shapes and sizes. Atop one pile snoozed a black and white cat that Stacey told me we could not have.

Then to the market where they sell vegetables, meat, olives, and fresh and dried fruit. Olives have appeared rather often in the last 24 hours, and I'm pleased with that. I admit to feeling rather daunted by the market stands, because they were soon to close, and we had their full attention. I find that annoying in places where I do speak the language. It was here that I realized I didn't even remember French numbers. We left for a supermarket where we could see the numbers, and maybe overpay, but at least avoid the staring.

On our way home, we remembered our desire for smoothies: It's hot, and smoothies are good! And look, there seems to be a place that sells beer... but probably other things, like maybe smoothies?

Here is where we found out that we didn't know the French word for smoothie, and we didn't have our phones with us to translate it. So we got beers, and they served us olives and peanuts, and one Moroccan bought us a second round. I'll leave it to you to Google what "smoothie" is in French. And I'll leave it to you to surmise whether we got a little lost on our way home.

Oh, never mind: it's "smoothie," and yes.

That's a Wrap

The experience of leaving began this February. I remember, because I told myself over and over that it wasn't time yet; it wasn't time to grieve; it wasn't time to prepare or pack; it wasn't even time to say I was leaving to anyone else. But I knew. February is six months away from August, and six months is a quarter of the time I've committed to this new endeavor. That's so ridiculous! I should not spend a quarter of my time in Morocco preparing to leave for here again!

Two weeks from now will find me in a very different setting from today, and I've made it no secret—I'm sad to say goodbye. I was listening to radio guest Norman Lear on "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me" a few days ago, and he said that his 94 years have equipped him to give the following advice, and I'll paraphrase it: 

Just two words, "over" and "next." When something's over, you gotta leave it. It's over. What's next? And if you could also imagine a hammock in between the two words, you've got it just about right. 

So many things are over. Where is that damn hammock? 

Reasons Why I'm Going

To learn to teach.

To live near the desert

To live near the ocean.

To escape the crush of scheduling, for which I take full responsibility.

To ask God how to stop being so angry.

To produce nothing, be known for nothing, be right about nothing, defend nothing.

To confront my loneliness, and befriend it.

To be out of the country during the 2016 presidential election.

To know Muslims.

... and there are many more reasons, some I haven't even allowed myself to think of. It seems to me that no one lives without an agenda. I just want to have a good one.

Your Good Gifts. You're Good Gifts.

Sometimes gifts come at exactly the right time, and make the deepest impression. I usually don't choose the right gifts to bring to parties, and sometimes I give up. I can think of two weddings where I just FORGOT to bring a gift. But I don't want to do without gifts. I need them, and so do you. In celebration of gifts, here's a list of some of the most important ones I've received.

I listened to the Pocahontas soundtrack, and discovered that I loved to sing. Who thought that would be a good gift? An aunt and uncle I haven't seen in 20 years.

I take up this notebook, and realize it, too, was a gift to me. I am so grateful for it. Blank sheets for my pulsing heart to glide along; blue lines to bring its rhythm true. Slow alignment.

An argyle t-shirt dress I wore with tights for two years. I had very few growth spurts. And as ugly as the garment sounds, I can assure you it was totally in style mid-nineties.

A down comforter I slept on before I even reached home.

My current cell phone.

Yesterday's pancakes.

A pair of heart-shaped earrings.

Spontaneously plugging my tire, filling it with air, and telling me it would be alright.

A plastic to-go mug filled with hot coffee when I left your house for a long drive home. I still use that mug.

After moving into the apartment, with far less help that I needed (read, just my mom - her moving help was one of those gifts that you can never repay), the two of you bounded up the stairs with smoothies for my mom and me.

When we were in Vegas over my birthday, you gave me a card with a cat on the front. I'm bound to say no more in public, but I still laugh when I see it on my dresser.

You gave me your bed when you moved out, and it is far superior to my old one.

You, grandma, trusted me with a responsibility recently. It was so small, setting up something decorative. I could have forgotten about it. I have only since realized that you entrusted me with a piece of your happiness.

You took me seriously when I sounded crazy, more than once, and became indignant for my sake.

You gave me some headbands I use all the time.

You trusted me with a secret. I have kept it.

You gave me frankincense, my favorite scent in all the world. Always available to me now.

This list... it's killing me. It's hard to tell where it ends. It doesn't end. I meant to focus this on the material gifts you've given me, friends, acquaintances, strangers! But I cannot separate them from the immaterial that have been so dear to me. Thank you.

8 minutes 30 seconds

I'm listening to a song worth writing to.

I've listened to this song so many times. I just today saw a video of the band playing it. They are such as I, mere mortals. Though the only decipherable thing we have in common besides our humanity is the fact that we occasionally can be found wearing t-shirts.

If you listen to "The Only Moment We Were Alone," you'll see that everything that happens before 8 minutes 30 seconds is good. You get lost thinking about everyone you've ever met, even imagining that high school and your worst fights had meaning. Yeah, it's a good song until 8 minutes 30 seconds.

Then, at 8 minutes 30 seconds, you realize you've been waiting for this. This is the purpose of the song. When the rifts swell into a wall, a roar, wave after wave of built tension finally breaking on land from on high. The absence of vocals makes me believe the tidal wave crashed on an uninhabited shore. Yet I am there.

I wonder if I'll be 80 when I hit my 8 minutes 30 seconds.