Let me describe this moment.
I am in seat 74D on a 747 somewhere just past the international date
line. I’m 5 hours off Sydney coast and 9
hours from Dallas where local time is approximately 4am. I have watched a move, several TV episodes, eaten a three course meal
from tiny, metal boxes, and since I have been awake for over 24 hours, I should
be sleeping like Superhusband beside me.
But these luscious little thoughts keep tempting me, chasing
me, needling my typing fingers. I am
awash with what was, is, and will be. I
will write until my precariously perched laptop runs out of reserve battery
power and possibly by then will have had enough catharsis to put me to bed for
a while. Speaking of going to bed, my
lovely mother in law, who I just left in the Perth airport, dressed to the
nines at 4:00 in the morning to drop us off, has a particular way of saying
that it’s time to sleep. “It’s sleepy
bobo time!” she coos. Often it’s shortened and asked of others; “Off to bobos, then?”
I don’t know what “bobo” is supposed to mean in this instance, but the fact
that it’s a weird little Lancastrian term, reminiscent of some of the
Southernisms of my family is distinctly comforting.
I am wearing grey dress pants because they are the most
comfortable, stretchy pants I have that are fit to be seen in public. I have delicately coupled this with a purple
t-shirt I bought years ago at a thrift store.
The left side of the neckline refuses to cover my bra strap a la Naomi
on Mamma’s Family, and the front middle waistline area has a constellation of
little holes just about the belly
button. These were either caused by my
mother’s dryer which has little fangs that grab clothing during the cycle and
gnaw them, or from giant Australian outback moths munching on my clothes while
we caravanned. (I digress a moment about
the moths. They do not only have a large
wing span, but they are round, juicy creatures.
Like Hindenburgs of the insect world.
I was in a caravan park ablution block in Cervantes when one got stuck
flapping around in the sink next to mine as I washed my hands. It sounded exactly like the noise that would
occur if you were to play racquetball in a barrel with a lump of baby
mozzarella cheese. Do not underestimate the moth theory.) I am also wearing
knee-high black socks, like a dork. But
at least now my feet won’t look like summer sausage when I get off this
plane. We’re flying into Dallas, after all,
and it’s very important that none of me looks like breakfast meat. Top off this
ensemble with some (again) second-hand brown, fake-fur-lined Sketchers sneaks
with paint splatter on them, and you’ve almost got the picture.
I say almost, because while my body is weary and suspectly
dressed, my mind feels more fecund than it has in months. I am headed home to the US, and that has
something to do with it—the prospect of hugging my mother brought tears to my
eyes in the boarding cue today. But more than that, I have been granted by
heaven some distance both from the ground I walked on and the ground I’ve
covered. I feel as though I’m seeing my
timeline from a slightly raised platform—even if that platform IS a plane whose
population is likely greater than some of the towns I’ve just driven through. And let me just say: Babies on a plane. What a concept.
But I am breathing freer in this high altitude. I see my life stretch out like a crazy quilt
in all colors and all directions. I am glorying in the accomplishments
Superhusband and I have had, and dreaming of the ones we’ll conquer next. Since my last entry, we have travelled over
1,000kms of wild, flat, Western Australian soil. We visited Kalbarri gorges (which were far
less disappointing than the pizza of the first night there, if you didn’t count
the flies.) We visited the only monastic community in Western Australia and
learned about monks and conversions in the 1900s. We drove SO far out into nothingness to the
Hutt River Principality, an “Independent Sovereign State” about 200kms from
Perth which boasts (besides holding the distinction of seceding from Australia
through a governmental loophole over wheat quotas in the 1970s) its own stamps,
minted coins, and a royal couple named Leonard and Shirley. If you see me during this visit to the USA,
ask me and I will produce the postcards as proof. You should look it up, and raise a glass to
some good ‘ole boys with really good lawyers. We have FINALLY, after five solid
months of silence, been approved to complete interview paperwork with the US consulate in Sydney—just four days
before heading back to the US because MY visa ran out. We have climbed and photographed Wave Rock,
which, as you might guess, looks exactly like an enormous ocean wave carved
into a bluff. We haven’t just lived in
Western Australia, we have gallivanted in it. We have expanded into our
existence and become more formidable people.
I read (on another lovely blog recently) that the woman of
Proverbs 31 could “laugh at the days to come” because she was secure in God’s
estimation of herself. I like that—it resonates. But I hope when I laugh at my days to come,
it’s not only about the security but the hilarity of the combinations of things
and people and sights and projects we tackle.
I want see the incongruity, the asymmetry, the glorious heterogeneous
abundance of my life and cackle. I want to live in a house with a red
door. I want to have children who can
claim three continents as their flesh and blood. I want to be a part of a world
of artists and Christians and baristas and musicians and small-town-community-theatre
enthusiasts. I want to (this very weekend) sing in the midst of a great, human
pipe organ of my relatives in honest a capella that makes rafters quiver. I want to serve Thai curries and southern
biscuits on the same table, both made with hands which dust themselves on the
apron my mother made from her mother’s fabric. I want to fold and unfurl my
crazy quilt life in all configurations so that all the colors get to meet. And
when I’m done here, I want to fly to my Maker leaving a sparkling detritus of
lives touched, tears shed, hands held, shoulders leant upon, and laugh lines
earned. And I now renew my conviction to thank that Maker every single day for
the fabrics He’s lent me to stitch on.
