Must remember to bring my own airfreshener. Smells affect me more than general cleanliness. Just make it smell good and we are fine. I am the minority–female and white. I feel subdued, realizing I hold on to my middleclassness more than I wished. The buses are nice–much nicer than the bus stops and their cold black grate chairs. Unfortunately, the bus stops are where you get stranded at. My bus doesn’t show and I spend midnight to 6am heating up those cold black grate chairs, talking to a couple brave souls who interrupt my nose-in-book routine.

One is a friendly Greyhound worker, who simply takes the book out of my hands to read the cover, and who’s eyebrows raise as he reads “A Year of Biblical Womanhood” (he is about as surprised as I am that I like reading it). He pats my head and says he is proud of me. Normally he sees trashy books and pretends to read aloud the title “How to Kill Your Husband.” But not for me. “So are you?” He asks, “Going to kill your husband?”

“I don’t plan on it.” I blush, willing the pink off my cheeks, “When I do marry.” “Well what are you waiting for?” He asks. “For him to finish college” is my oversimplified answer, to which he chuckles out something about not waiting too long and “Lucky fellow.”

The other conversation resulted in recieving Maudi Gras beads from a traveling musician who had missed his bus to go hear his girlfriend sing at the Grand Ol’ Opre. “I’d better do something aweful nice for her on Valentine’s Day!” he says, to which i heartily agree, and then wonder why he asked me out for drinks in the next sentence. No, I tell him, I have a date with my blanket.

In Cinncinati, I met a fellow Indianapolis-ian who tells me somberly, “I just can’t wait to smell Indianapolis.” I nod, thinking of my bed more than my nose. The huge snowflakes fall perfectly, drifting and dusting everything without the intrusive wind that ruins the winter season for me.

By the time I’ve finished people watching, dozing, and ”Biblical Womanhood,” the snow is gone and we’ve entered Indiana. I am four hours later than scheduled, but surprisingly rested. Some thing you can’t control. So you just ride.

When did we start calling people colors instead of Nationalities? I am “Proud to be an American,” and I know many people have worked long and hard to be called that, but isn’t it just lazy? What about where you came from before (except Native Americans)?

Call me German, not white. And if you must call me a color, get a paint swatch to figure out what color I am because I’ve seen white paper, white shirts, white shoes…and I am not white.

We have forgotten how to be creative. Or maybe, we have forgotten to figure out who we are. I don’t relate to being German: beer, chocolate, snow, WW1 and WW2–no thank you please. I don’t know much more about Germany than that. And that is a shame. I haven’t tried.

I was watching “Lincoln” with my black boyfriend, thinking, “Man, this is so applicable to us.” But he isn’t black–he is Jamaican. He was born in Jamaica. For him, it was a conscious choice: he came to America when he was 6 and the children laughed at his accent. So he lost it, and embraced all that was called being American. He cried when his sisters told him he was still Jamaican. He turned to me in the movie and said, “This is our history.”

He identifies with American culture–he chose it–whereas I have always looked for a way out. I never have culture shock leaving the country: but always have counter-culture shock when returning. So the American-trying-not-to-be and the non-American-trying-to-be find a middle ground and begin to create their own culture. And don’t call it gray.

 

One tear

two tears falling from my face

How can I feel so strong

From a story so far away?

(http://www.kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com)

The words hold my heart

Aids. Dying. 4 children. Mother.

There is so much suffering in

This world

 

I hold my own world tight

because I am not sure

If I can handle letting anymore

Sorrow in

 

But don’t you see, My child?

That’s where I enter in

I use those holes and cracks

To make heaven.

I am still making heaven now–

It is not done for you yet.

 

You can only brush shoulders with people

For so long

Before they start brushing your heart

And that is as it should be.

I’ve been convinced for awhile now that the best of life happens when you can’t write. Just like the best ideas come in the shower or right before you fall asleep, and so can’t be marked down. It is Wednesday. My first return to my mini-sabbaths, which have been able to fit into my new schedule. Breathe.

I read http://www.kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com and it always makes a bit weepy because it is life and it is beautiful and i can feel it and it is so close and yet so far. Katie is doing many things I at a level I have never reached. And I half envy her at times. The other most of the time, I know enough to never wish that on anyone…carrying so many burdens. It is a beautiful horrible life. I say a prayer for her and her people.

From inside my apartment I can hide and finish unpacking and writing more papers and plans for the future. And my mornings are divided between Cajueiro Claro and Mussurepe, my rural Living Stones, and my afternoons are divided between Carpina and Guadalajara, much more urban areas, where I help the Athletes in Action group with basketball. Weekends, of course, at the dump. I’ve only been once so far, and felt the familiar feeling of hands crawling up my arms to hold my hands and rest on me. To just…touch.

We are planning Easter good stuff. And for my Mom and friend to come visit next month. And regestering all these new children and birthday parties to catch up from January and February. And stories to tell like Gustavo, who had a head infection with pus coming out of it–healed. Like the boys riding up on their donkeys in the middle of our coloring circle. Like Cajueiro claro getting uniforms, and getting Edivaldo to answer just one question in front of everyone, because he is so trained into thinking he cannot do anything right in school.

I am glad to be back. Home. I look at the groceries on the shelf and I think about what it will be like to shop with him next to me. I walk to church, and can’t wait until he will walk with me. I doodle his name, and write him the weirdest messages on skype because I am used to texting. Long distance relationships. All of the best and worst of human interaction. Breathe. It is a different focus, thinking about how things will change to where I am coming home with him. to him. Exciting and scary and one step at a time.

I find myself lacking many words many times. And wondering how to enter life, in general, on a deeper level. This growing up stuff seems to just keep going and going. I thought I already did that. Already claimed my adulthood. Why is there still so much to learn? Thank God there is still so much to learn!

And the children. So many, with their lives ahead and their pasts behind, and who knows what they need right now, and how do I handle the kid in the bright yellow shirt who keeps yelling at me with that smirk? And then how do I leave and do other things like paperwork and organization? And now I am a grad student. In a class overflowing with gossipy women who are nice, but make it so I can’t hear the teacher and make me wonder how the future of the world will be, if this is what it means to be at the top of the educated world. God save us all—no one knows what we are doing.