Transitions...(da-da-da-DUM)
It is always a pit-filled road to wholeness, I think.
Interpretation: adjusting to a new place is awfully hard in ways you don't expect.
I find myself entering that phase when I want to connect but I don't at the same time, for fear of disconnecting elsewhere... At that phase when I am almost angry with people in the elsewhere for moving on without me, and angry with myself for moving in the first place. And somehow still excited about it all... Just lonely and homesick despite the fact of being with friends and...at home?
Such a funny world...
This week is so full of work; today is about 14+ hours. I am working for a transition programme for international students and TCKs...tomorrow I am supposed to run a seminar on dealing with grief and goodbyes.
That should be interesting, and I'm not convinced I'm the one for the job.
But as Shakespeare wrote, "say so, and so be!"
The Art of Settling Down
New York.
A place of my own.
Moving in this week has shown me several things, or at least, reminded me of them...
Firstly, a move is always exciting. It's like Christmas right now, unpacking all these boxes and trunks and tubs of treasures that I have had locked away in storage, waiting for me to come claim them and love them again.
Secondly, a move "back" that you know will not be exactly the same as before is not necessarily a bad or painful thing, provided you keep your expectations correctly in order. There is, after all, hopefully something good which you have left behind you and may step back into. As is the case for me here, quite happily. It is good to be reunited with friends and enjoy them, even as you do miss those you have left behind somewhere else.
It is good for me to see that I do know someplace in the world. It's so nice to go down main street and visit my friends house and help make dinner there... To go up the winding road I run on and visit newly married friends in their cute little apartment--where other friends I know once lived. It is so wonderful to go walking through the woods and over the hills and across the fields, picking wildflowers and sticking my toes in the pond and feeling the wind in my hair and singing and enjoying being alone in the beauty of it all. I am so happy to go sit at the table with my host family again, chatting over some delicious treat or drink and knowing I am loved and welcomed and wanted. Knowing that I have people to love on and come back to.
It is so exciting to live off campus, in my "own" place rather than college housing; a place that I chose and I rent. It's cozy and unique (unlike the look-alike campus housing), and it's going to be like a magic world when I decorate it for Christmas! Or the wildflowers I have here already, celebrating this season from their vases scattered around the place (tastefully, I must add).
I have now permission to paint as I wish, and will be doing so this very coming week--quite exciting, really. There is something special about changing a place; about designing it to your taste and then doing the work of it yourself. A labour of love makes a place of love.
This being, of course, the first time I have a place of my own... I am inspired to make it quite homey--despite the fact I'll only be living there for about 9 months. Then again... nine months is longer thanI've lived anywhere in the last two or more years, so that really is not too bad!
Now I just have to...
--choose and buy paint
--get a throw-rug for my floor
--get another bookcase (I have so many books here--I never knew!)
--a desk lamp and a stand up lamp
and of course... buy some groceries so I stop living on popcorn each meal! :)
Settling down is, I think, an art in itself. You can be artistic with moving in; with decorating and arranging; with the foods you make... But the act of settling down is art in itself; how you arrange your emotions; what you let yourself see; how you choose to love. I'm choosing the colours and setting the tones for the painting that this year of my life will be for me to look back on and remember, and I'm choosing to pick up that brush and paint. These months will not be a blank canvass: I intend to live in the fulness and joy God intends for His people. I think as long as I look at it that way, I really will enjoy these next few months.
Greeting Lady Liberty
I suppose everyone on this side of the pond knows that in the USA, there is a law saying no drinking alcoholic beverages under the age of 21. That being the case, they have the necessary enforcement measures such as the one fondly
referred to as "carding." This particular process would enfold something like this:
Unfortunate buyer: I'd like a red wine, please.
Steward: Right. (
turns to drinks, but pauses with hand in mid-air. Turns back) I'm sorry, but how old are you?
Unfortunate buyer: Sorry? Oh, right. I'm [
insert age over 21]
Steward: (
hesitating still, wondering if ID should actually be checked) Ok. You know, you'll be happy someday to look younger than your age.
But it is not the carding of alcoholic beverages to underage or potentially underaged buyers. The question I raise is the carding of coffee to underage or potentially underaged buyers.
Yes, you did indeed read that correctly.
Coffee.
Now picture this scenario in your mind:
Steward: Now, what can I get you to drink, miss?
me: Coffee, thanks.
Steward: (
turns to drinks, but pauses with hand in mid-air. Turns back) I'm sorry, but are you twenty one?
me: (
feeling quite flabergasted, complete with dropping jaw) Excuse me?
Steward (
Patiently) Are you twenty one?
me: I am twenty-two, actually. (
brain racing franticaly to figure out what has happened that she's being carded for coffee)Steward: Ah. Alright then. (
turns to pour coffee)me: I'm sorry, but... I don't understand!
Steward: (
looks serious for a moment, then; burst of laughter) Ah, I'm just messing with you--it was a joke! (
hands me my coffee)me: Ah. (laugh) Okay...
And that, my friends, was my welcome back to the US of A.
Shock and confusion.
Flying Into Sunsets
Above: White cliffs of Dover & a Sea France Ferry
This week is one of those weeks. You just keep running running running. Sunday: London area, England. Monday--Tuesday: Bratislava, Slovakia. Tuesday--Wednesday: Vienna, Austria. Wednesday--Thursday: Bratislava & countryside, Slovakia. Friday: Maybe Vienna? Saturday: Bratislava. Sunday: New York.
It's a week of goodbyes--there's been at least one each day this week, I think.
It's a week of changes--I just got my hair cut today, for instance.
It's a week of good conversations--lots of meals out and time spent in cafes and pubs with friends
It's a week of challenges--how do you pack 9 months into two measely suitcases?
It's a week of surprises and dissapointments; of plans and changed plans.
I guess it's a fairly normal week, really. It just stands out because I know it's the last one here.
Sometimes you just fly into the sunset and that's the way you go--never knowing what hit you.
Thoughts on Home... (again)
I told my sister in June, while visiting her in the USA, that I had so many homes I just couldn't keep holding onto them anymore; you only have so many fingers and toes; your grasp only holds for so long before it slips. I also told her I'm not God: I cannot love the whole world.
But you know, I think I'm coming to see things a little differently now. For instance, I don't know that I think anymore that home is something which you grasp; it is something that instead holds you. I don't need to strain myself and slowly break into peices trying to hold onto what I have seen as different parts of me; different bits of home.
Love does not clutch.
Home is where the heart is; if the heart is at peace, then regardless of wherever--or how many wherever's--home is, then home will be settled peacefully, too. It's not something you have to fully understand, either; but something that does demmand acceptance. If I feel fragmented, it is because I have chosen to allow myself to live a fragmented life rather than a whole life.
I choose wholeness.
Shocks and Surprises...
It rather gives a person a nasty sort of jolt to realise they have only one week left somewhere when they thought surely it was longer... But the fact is, I have only one week left in Europe before heading off to the North American Continent. Mind you, I am looking forward to that experience, but it is the goodbye on this side of the pond that makes me sad.
Right now I'm in UK, having taken a bus across the continent to get here. Yes indeed. Definitely one of the best things I've ever done in my whole life, taking the bus like that. :) Sure, a train would have been much better, but much more expensive. Going across the continent like that was something I have always wanted, and I was not dissapointed in the least. My passport also has now a lovely new stamp from France, where I crossed over by ferry from Calais to Dover. That was, if I may say, one of the absolute best parts of the whole experience. And yes, the cliffs of Dover really are white, and yes, they are wonderful to watch, rising slowly from the water as if nothing more than a low fog at first sight. My determination to one day cross the Atlantic by boat has been reinforced. Someday I shall indeed sail into New York Harbor.
A word of advise for the traveller by bus, however: make sure, if you buy an open-ended ticket, that the return trips are not filled up for the next month. It could cause a rather inconvenient glitch in your plans...
Time is running, tick-tock tick-tocking...
I've enjoyed this time in UK imensely, especially today... Walking along a canal after lunch at a local pub; going shopping in the next village over (and actually buying a few items that caught my fancy); birthday party around a bonfire (with really tasty roasted bananas & chocolate, among other things); playing piano in the reception room of a grand old English manor house; and tonight sleeping outside under the starry heavens.
And of course, making new friends and meeting new people--always the best of it all.
But then, that shouldn't be a suprise at all, should it?
