homesick

Photo borrowed from Amber's flickr site http://www.flickr.com/photos/ambery/

So I know I need to blog again, but I've been struggling over what to write, especially because this has been a lonely month. I keep resisting the temptation to put "Jenny is lonely" for my facebook status update. I mean, how pathetic is that? But if I'm to revisit this blog, I might as well lay all my cards on the table at the outset.

October was unusual, because in a short span of time I was able to travel back to New York with my two kids and hold my godson Ike as he was baptized, visit with my mentor from seminary, and stay with my children's great-grandfather, Warren. Because we lived in New York for three years and because Anna was born there, It an was emotionally intense time.

I can't describe what it was like to hold Amber's son Ike in my arms, to gaze on the Hudson from Warren's windows, to watch the train rumble in from the City, and to drive through the autumn leaves to visit my seminary mentor with Amber. I hate to say it, but I was even kind of pleased when she got lost on the way home, except for that it was my fault, our gas tank was nearly empty and I was a little worried she wasn't going to like me anymore. Still, in my hearts of hearts, I wished we could stay lost as long as possible, because as soon as we got back to Warren's apartment, we'd have to say goodbye.

Every experience in New York was tinged with sadness. Seven years ago, from that same window overlooking the Hudson, I watched the billowing smoke rise from the Twin Towers and realized that I could never really feel safe again. In that same apartment with the gorgeous view, we began to lose John's spunky grandmother Sally as Alzheimer's took hold. All this to say, I don't want to go back and relive it all, and yet I can't help but ache for the experiences that I will never have again: Sally and Warren holding Anna the morning she was born--four generations piled into that hospital room in White Plains, or later, when Anna was a newborn and I was trying to figure out how to be a mom, the reassuring presence of Amber folding her laundry beside me, so casual, as if the mundane would always be available for us to share.


After I got back to Kona, six house guests arrived: more close friends from seminary Fr. John and Jenny Hainsworth, their three kids and our friend Heather. It is unfortunate Fr. John and Jenny stole our names and then escaped over the Canadian border, and also that they also serve an Orthodox parish on an island, but we have chosen to forgive them. My husband and Fr. John were ordained two days apart. My husband stood up with Fr. John as a deacon, and issued a most tenuous "Axios?" after Fr. Paul poked his head out of the royal doors and cued him, "Axios!"


Anyway, while they were here it was like a continual feast. We had wonderful meals, all ten of us, consumed copious amounts of coffee, and assembled at the fire pit every night after the kids were tucked in to talk story and drink wine. One night we saw a series of shooting stars, although I saw more than the others and called them bimbos, which they all seemed to appreciate.

Of course when they were here, everything seemed oddly hilarious. I'm still chuckling over their final trademark departure when Fr. John said, "Goodbye beautiful house, of course it is only beautiful because of the people who live in it," while Jenny barfed into an imaginary barf bag.

All these October encounters caused this odd emotional response in me. I hope somebody else has experienced this, because maybe they can help me understand it a little. Basically, I long for every place I have lived, every person I have come to love in each place, all at the same time. Does this happen to everyone who moves a lot? Is this some kind of scattered personality disorder?

Tonight, watching Barack Obama's acceptance speech in Grant Park, I missed Hyde Park, the neighborhood where we both lived for all those years. I wish I could have heard all the honking horns as he left his home for the park, I wish I could have watched history unfold there as all of my old neighbors undoubtedly did. Just to express the depth of my wistfulness, I actually felt a little sad for Barack that he will have to leave that unique neighborhood to take up residence at the White House. I say this because I know what it is like to leave, and how you can never have it back, no matter where you live.

I really miss living in a building from 1894, the high ceilings, the yard, the neighbors, especially Joan and Marji, Ser and Dina. I miss the seasons: the crunch of leaves under my feet, waking in the middle of the night to glimpse the first snow of the season. I even missed the steamy summers, because they helped me thaw out from the winters. And of course, I missed a lot of opportunities I didn't seize, such as a chance to trick-or-treat with Obama's family last Halloween.

Hawaii has been better than I could have hoped for in almost every way. I love the community we serve. I love walking on our windy mountain road, smelling the coffee trees and the gauva, waking to the sound of roosters and cattle and birdsong. But all this beauty doesn't make me miss people less. I think, perhaps, the openness required to experience it all only intensifies the ache, and reminds me how far I have to go to make a home here.

Perhaps, on some level, I am grieving. Almost one year into this adventure, I am finally counting the cost, looking up at the lopsided moon (we are so close to the equator here that we don't see a crescent, but a smile) and realizing how far away I am from all that I have known and from many of the people I love most.

In a new place--even a year into it--there is always the sense that you have to prove yourself. People don't know your history yet, so they watch and wait. I'm sure this is especially the case for clergy families. One of the biggest difficulties for me, silly as it sounds, is that I make a lot of jokes that people don't get--they don't even seem to realize that I'm trying to be funny. I really miss the fluidity of old friends who are always ready to receive a joke.

This ache seems to leave me with a few options: I can update my facebook status 12 times a day and check my email at least twice that, or perhaps I can begin to be present in a deeper way to the people right around me, to start to know them and to let them know me.

Anyway, the roosters are crowing, a good clue that I've been up too late already. Tomorrow my new friend Viviana will be here to help me weed. She tells me that weeding is therapeutic, that only the Japanese on this island get it right. Maybe all that weeding will help me as I struggle to put down my own roots, right here, in this volcanic soil.

tears and transfiguration

Last Wednesday morning, as I woke to the pale sun coming up over the mountains, I realized that more than 3,000 miles away, Caroline Kennedy was being buried by the people at St. Nicholas Parish in Portland. How fitting, it seemed, that Caroline's funeral would fall on the feast of the Transfiguration.

Caroline was a magnificent planner in all regards. She wore elegant hats to the services and did not neglect to coordinate them with her husband's bow ties. When she and Alex had us for tea, everything was artfully arranged--there were the crustless cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches, real tea, pungent and earthy, poured from a fine tea pot into delicate china glasses that jingled on the saucers. She and Alex were gracious and warm and put us at ease. They were also pillars of the community at St. Nicholas and Caroline's death created a gap that no one else could fill.

It grieved me, that morning, to be so far away and to miss her funeral. But during those first moments of the day, when I was lingering at the edge of sleep, as I lifted my head from the pillow and saw the green mountains against the pink sky, I didn't feel so far away. I felt like I was "there" for just a few moments, an experience that is both sweet and odd and seems to occur more often around funerals.

It was also Anna's first day of first grade, which seemed another genius stroke of planning. What better day for her to start "real school"? Because it was the feast of Transfiguration, I didn't just have to remember Anna's medical forms, vaccination records, emergency supply kit--complete with flashlight, non-perishables and a family photo and note--as well as her backpack filled with her sharp new pencils, unused erasers, squeaky clean tennis shoes, socks and lunch and snacks, but, also, just as I was headed out the door with Anna and her heavy backpack, we stopped to gather our fruit into a basket: mangoes, papayas and limes.

As I drove up the winding road to the school, a teacher was waiting for me. She leaned in my window. "How are you this morning?" she said, smiling at me despite the cars behind me. She showed me where to park. Then Anna and Natalie and I walked up the hill, where the assistant principal greeted us, followed by another teacher, with a camera. "Would you like me to take a picture?" she asked.

I was glad that the teacher wanted to take a photo because Anna was not very cooperative with my attempts to capture her on film. In fact, she seemed downright embarrassed by my camera, which caught me off guard. Just a few weeks back, it I was was still pretty much the center of her universe, but that morning, I was a liability. She was ready for this and she wanted to face it on her own, without the cumbersome distractions of the mama paparazzi.

Her school is a small charter with an emphasis on project-based learning. The classrooms, which were designed and built by the teachers and parents are like small houses, dotting a lush field surrounded by Hawaiian gardens that the kids tend. Anna's room as a huge lanai for stories and cubbies, just ten feet from a gate where cows graze and moo. She's also a stone's throw from a "butterfly house" teeming with tropical flowers.

Here is Anna beside her cubby, on that first day:


The moment Anna stepped into the classroom, she was focused on the teacher, eager to see what would happen next. She didn't even glance back as I stood in the doorway with the other moms, which was a good thing, because tears were streaming down my cheeks and I couldn't do a thing about it.

Fortunately my cell phone rang. It was John, who was already at the church but had run out of wine. So I was pulled back to the feast, with all its concrete, earthy details. I rushed home for the wine and corkscrew, and then headed back up the mountain to the church.

Just a few of us were at that service, and Natalie was terribly out of sorts after seeing her sister off to school, so I was a little distracted. But by some grace I did get to hear the sermon and it was a good one. John said that Transfiguration is the day that the Glory of God shone through Christ, but only to the extent that the disciples could bear it. He said that God is so kind that way, just showing us a little bit of himself at a time so we won't fall down dead from his fierce glory. But, he said, this day is also a challenge to open ourselves a bit more, to carve out a more space each day so that we can increase our capacity to bear and reflect this light.

And then, he sprinkled holy water on our little baskets of fruit, the humble offerings of a fledgling community, picked from the imperfect trees on a small island in the middle of a vast ocean, barely visible on most globes. He reminded us that this custom comes from agricultural societies, where the farmers had been nurturing seeds for months, praying and laboring for a good crop. This was the day that the hope bore visible fruit that everyone could see and celebrate. And this year, for us, it was the day that our own first fruit started first grade, and also the day that our old friend, Caroline Kennedy was laid in the ground to await her own transfiguration.

fear of death

Natalie, at 19 months is determined to swim on her own. She fights my hold on her, kicks, flails her arms, and she imagines that she will swim just like Anna. And yet the moment I let go, she sinks. I watch her body slip just below the surface of the water, and then I grab her, and she comes up sputtering, elated, ready to try again, wriggling out of my hold.

After an hour of this, I was exhausted. I brought the kids up to the house and cooked some alphabet pasta. Then we cut open a mango and munched on some berries and yogurt. Both the kids were water weary and I knew we needed an early bedtime, but then John called from the gallery he was working at and asked if I wanted to go out to eat with some friends.

I told him no, I wasn't hungry and the kids needed an early bedtime. He told me that he was very hungry and I promised to make him some Indian food when he got home. By Indian food, I meant a package of Amy's Natural Palak Paneer. Because I buy these at Costco and he'd already had a few this week, he was none too eager for my offering.

The battery on my phone had died, so our "chat" took place on Gmail, and that last I heard from him, he had said, "I'm coming home soon." If you were to sit him down he would tell another version of the story in which he said he would be home at seven. But I digress.

Our conversation took place at 5:39. He was about 15 minutes up the mountain, so I had no reason to believe he'd be home any later than 6. But 6 came and went and he still wasn't here. I contemplated how windy and perilous those roads are. I loaded the dishwasher, folded laundry, wiped down the table and crawled around on the rug picking up small plastic beads from Anna's most recent project. It was 6:45 and John still wasn't there. I tried to remain calm, but this just didn't make sense.

I called his phone, and got a message. That fit well with my growing theory that he'd been a wreck. Of course he couldn't pick up the phone if he was unconscious. It was now seven. I decided I might as well go out on the lanai and eat his Indian food. I watched the sun set over the ocean, listened to the birds calling to each other from the palm trees and thought of how much more enjoyable the sunset would be if he was with me.

Where was he? I thought perhaps it was time to call the police, but I would have to wait for Anna to fall asleep, as she would surely be alarmed by the questions I would ask. I wondered where I should bury him--Hawaii seemed fitting, as he is blossoming here. And yet, if he were to die, why would I stay? My purpose here is tied to him. I guess I'd be wiser to box him up and ship him back to Minnesota, where we could tend the grave. It occurred to me that I would also have to update my Facebook profile, from "married" to "widow."

And then I thought of how sad it would be to tell the folks at the mission, who have waited so long for a priest, that their priest was no more. In particular I thought of an elderly woman who told me on Sunday that she is relieved that John will be able to do her husband's funeral, when the day comes. What would I tell her?

Now on the bright side of things, we could just put this whole Ph.D. business behind us. What a headache that has been! And yet, I don't want to give up any part of this life of ours, I want to be right where I am living this life, with this man--and where, or where is he?

Finally Anna called out, "Dad's here." John came up the stairs. Relief turned to rage. "Where were you?" He countered that he said he'd be home at seven, that I had said that I wasn't planning on a family meal. "But I said I would cook Indian Food for you," I said. "But I didn't want another meal out of box," he said.

Now I was seething. "The last thing I expected, when you returned from the grave, was that you would insult my cooking!"

"Next time I come back from the dead," he said, "I'll try to accentuate the positive."

And then, I heard a soft knocking at the door. I looked out the window and saw a plumeria lei hung over the rail. I opened the door, and there was our houseguest, a cave dweller from Maui. Our squabble would have to wait.

"What's with the lei?" I said. "Well, I wasn't sure you would want it, so I left it outside," he said.

"I would love a lei," I said, bringing it into our home and placing it before the icons, a fragile circle of flowers around the lampada, catching the light and holding it there.

goodbye Hyde Park

As I write, I'm surrounded by half-packed boxes of books and the chaos of our dismantled home. Where there were photos, there are only empty nails. Friends come through the house, sizing up our furniture to see what will fit in their home. Freda has been adopted out, half-used medicines left in a plastic bag outside my neighbor's door. Each time a friend comes to take something else off our hands, I am both relieved and grieved--I want all that we have to be used and loved, and yet it feels so strange that it won't be used by us. As friends struggle out the door with our sofa and bookshelves I want to call after them, "We're not dead yet."

And yet this does feel so like dying. But the death now creates a way to the new life to come. It is as inescapable as the meal-less flight and the luggage and the juggling of children and shoes and laptops at the airport security checkpoints. None of this is pleasant, yet all of it is leading toward something good.

Being back in Hyde Park has been more emotional than I expected. When I was in Kona, I could barely feel anything for this place that we'd lived for five years. I could scarcely convince myself that a place so different actually existed. When Chicago friends would send photos of the snow-covered fire escapes I would look out my own window at the blue Pacific and waving palm trees and try to remember what it was like to nest in for the winter, the hum of the radiators, sipping coffee in the glider before my icons as the snow fell outside, the windows rattling against the howling wind.

It is strange being here in all sorts of ways I could not have anticipated. First comes the realization of what we had here, as I walk with my kids and bump into friends at every turn. Dare I generalize and say that most everyone is Hyde Park is interesting? A friend here shows me her husband's office, his photos of Mars and the blue light of a nuclear reaction. She gestures casually at the blue photo, saying, "If you're familiar with Nuclear Physics, you'll know what that is."

And it was, ultimately, the engaging conversations and friendships here that kept us afloat through the challenges of the early part of John's Ph.D. program. It was a gift, also, to mother my children in this context, and coming back I realize that so many of my early memories of Anna only become available as I meander along the sidewalk here.

Yesterday Anna begged to ride her scooter to the botany pond on the University of Chicago campus. There, so many memories surfaced. We came here for a summer when I was pregnant with her, and then moved here when she was less than a year. I can see her tottering down these streets here, stopping to examine every discarded bottle top and candy wrapper, forcing me to see the world in a whole new way.

When my friend Ser was here the other week, she said something that expressed some of what I felt on my bittersweet return to Hyde Park. She said, "It was here that we were birthed into motherhood." Hyde Park was a place of so many beginnings for me, as a mom, as a writer, as the wife of a new priest. Some of it was so painful, so far from what I expected or imagined, and yet now I see clearly--it was all gift, all of it.

And the other day, at Bonjour bakery, while munching on a chocolate-covered strawberry, Anna lost her second tooth. None of this seemed accidental, especially as I contemplate all the pieces of her childhood spent here. How right that she lost her first in Kona, her second in Hyde Park.

There will always be a little bit of the child Anna in both places. So on our last night together in Hyde Park John and I snuck out and buried that second tooth in the back yard. As we buried it we thanked God for all that had come to pass in this place and asked for all good things for our neighbors and for our years ahead in Kona, and we thanked God for this tooth, and for our beginnings as parents which will always be buried here.