Late

I should be asleep, but I can’t because it never fails: nighttime quietly whispers in my ear the names of the people and the places I love and miss the most, and I’d rather stay up and miss them than forget that I loved them at all.

The days are busy. America is busy. My days in America are busy in a way that they couldn’t be in South Africa. And it breaks my heart that this revelation only comes to me in the dead of night, when I’m reminded so much of my time in the purple house, thinking about life, and love, and all those things that really mattered.

Who have I become over the past year? Who and what have I fallen in and out of love with? Have I changed? Coming home was so much more confusing than I could ever have imagined in a way that I can never describe. They said it wouldn’t be easy. I knew that. But no one warned me that it would be hard in ways that I could never identify.

I’m happy. There is no question. I feel purpose. I feel loved. But I would be kidding myself (and everyone else) if I didn’t admit that a part of me feels missing sometimes. I don’t like to acknowledge it except in my rehearsed, script-ey kind of way, because then the reality of it all slips away for a bit. But every once in a while, in the dead quiet that brings with it images of tall grass with beautifully bright stars gleaming high above and waist-high hugs with magically untamed smiles, a calm panic grabs my heart and the tears well up but never come.

I sit down to get it all out, knowing full well that it’s impossible considering the fact that even I no longer understand the emotions and events and relationships that once seemed so simple. And yet, here I am, in the dead of night, typing nonsense to everyone who’s not me, because I’d rather stay up and miss them than forget that I loved them at all.

Germaphobes Beware.

I realize that I've returned, but there's still a lot of reflecting to be done - so my apologies, but bear with me. It helps!

This was originally written for my English Content class as part of a larger photo essay project reflecting on our lives as future teachers. This bit of writing went with a picture of one of our children whose hands are covered in yellow and orange paint:

She is my little princess and this is (arguably) my favorite picture from my entire time abroad. The pot belly, the confused expression, the multi-colored hands, the sheer innocence of it all - I mean, what's not to like?

But most of all, I love this picture because it reminds me of the beauty in messiness. Open Arms is chaotic; any piece of paper you put down is likely to have "I love you" scrawled across the top immediately, no matter how important or official it looks. Little hands get into everything. Weird, disgusting things get pulled out of tiny mouths. Organization is flighty and ringworm is rampant.

And yet, you fall in love. You fall in love with the untidiness of the bookshelves and the stains they put on (every one of) your shirts: the nail polish on my favorite sweatpants? A memory from girls night. The blue paint smears across my beloved Oregon sweatshirt? Remnants from the time one of our babies butted up to our freshly painted wall.

Bleached and sanitized memories swirl around only to be cycled out, but yellow and orange hands made imprints on my mind long ago.

I have come to learn that messy thoughts are the only ones that truly stick.