Missing.

Seems like the world is passing by right outside my window today. The leaves are fully shimmering on the trees, which seems strange to me. It makes me think of getting up early to watch the world wake up to the warmth and hearty growth of itself. I think the world takes a deep breath in the morning, as if to say: We made it through another night. Or maybe that’s just me. The world must be awake to itself, all of those crickets and new hatched birds keeping it on its toes through the darkest hour.

Today for some reason I feel missing.

I miss that musty old house in Galle, Sri Lanka. Waking up, making strong black tea and drinking it plain and bitter from one of those big glass mugs, reading Psalms before the rest of the house was stirring, the warm humid air from the fan blowing through the living room. There was a film of salty sea mist covering every surface of the house, making the red painted floor dull with its coating.

We prayed together and read the scriptures as a family of volunteers in a foreign land that, by the time I left, had felt like a home of sorts.

We walked along the coast, talking to children who lingered at the water’s edge, collecting shells, making disturbing discoveries: clothes, shoes, pieces of broken dishes washed on shore. Moments of silence, of mourning.

I miss ten hot, sweet cups of tea every day in the middle of exhausting work, the breezy nights at the fort, the times of meditation at sunset rock. Sunset dog with her happy greetings, rolling around in the long grass belly up as soon as she saw me coming.

I miss the sun coming through the windows of Kalighat, sitting with patients, feeding rice and potatoes. Wringing out long the long green sheets that smelled of disinfectant with other volunteers, carrying baskets of laundry to the roof for the strong mid-morning heat to dry them.

The book I am reading now is called Gilead. Here’s an excerpt:

“A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone.

No doubt that is true. Our dream of life will end as dreams do end, abruptly and completely, when the sun rises, when the light comes. And we will think, All that fear and all that grief about nothing. But that cannot be true. I can’t believe we will forget our sorrows altogether. That would mean forgetting that we had lived, humanly speaking. Sorrow seems to me to be a great part of t he substance of human life.” Marilynne Robinson