consumed with dreams of revisiting a halcyon youth. Not that I had an unhappy childhood – I’d be an a**hole to suggest I did – but I did have a lonely one. An (unwittingly) self-imposed lonely one, to be sure, but a lonely one – borne of a purely-intended but ultimately misguided self-righteousness and shallow piety that I believed might spare me the potential dreaded burden of disappointing God or my family or my church but which only served to make me the proverbial, pinched killjoy, an unlikely candidate for friendship. So a tourist, I was. A visitor. But never an inhabitant of the insular worlds orbiting around me. I hovered on the fringes, desperate to belong, but fear (and back then, too often, judgment) kept me hostage to my own isolation. (I am still plagued, to a certain extent, with the vestiges of this interior covenant, for I often find that even my most cherished friends belong already to their own, well-established communities – their own, insular worlds – and by their grace I trespass from time to time, but never quite find my home among them; no self-righteous judgment now, but the fear remains…of rejection? of revealing my true self? I don’t know…). Anyhoo, so yeah – I’ve always been quite determined to leave that particular ghost behind and will routinely dispense with any affiliated memories with eager, if sometimes wanton, abandon (in my haste to cast off my most forlorn recollections, I’m sure I’ve misplaced a few of the good ones as well, else how do I explain finding, in an otherwise pretty good life, such grist for the poor-me mill?).But then I met the “Irish” (what they’re affectionately called here at St. Francis), a family of short-term volunteers at the hospital, and I was startled by an unexpected envy and a sharp, if unfamiliar, longing for youth. As a family, they utterly captivated me. Both the parents - aging hippy-type doctors afflicted with an incurable wanderlust - but especially the children. First seven year-old V, a round-faced, smiling Thai boy the family adopted a few years ago, who spent most of his days at the house where I’m staying in happy collusion with Shelagh’s three youngest kids; and ten year-old Lili, a bold, feisty, fearless, slip of a girl (a “pistol”, my dad would call her), whip-smart and bright with spirit. Then Freya – elegant, willowy, lovely, grounded Freya – who, at twelve years old, already possesses more grace and poise than I could hope to in my lifetime. And, finally, eldest son Patrick. I’ve yet to meet the rakish doctor that all
my friends are convinced I will on my little adventure – and for whom I keep my fingers firmly and optimistically crossed – but if I can wait 15 or 20 years, I think I might know where to find him. Youthful swagger, mischievous grin, disarming Irish charm, way too smart for his own good… Oh to be sixteen again, with the world quite literally my playground and no years of accumulated sorrows (thank you, Julia Glass) to shed.I don’t know. Maybe I’m romanticizing these kids. Maybe they roll their eyes and harbor secret resentment at the announcement of each new family adventure; maybe, in true shortsighted adolescent fashion, they have no idea how lucky they are – shuttled periodically as they are from one exotic country to another – and instead find that their peripatetic life leaves them feeling as hopelessly unanchored and unmoored as I do (I wonder if, when you make the world your home, you might sometimes feel as though you have no home at all…?). Maybe this constant motion has made them miserable outcasts in Dublin and they suffer the same loneliness I do, the same yearning to belong – somewhere, anywhere. I don’t know - I didn’t ask - but I doubt it. These kids are too bold, too self-assured, too together. In short, they’re way too cool. And I can’t help but find myself wishing for a chance at life the way they know it.
*****
So I’m at St. Francis now. Er, well, I was when I started writing this entry (man, I suck at
blogging!). Anxious to get back out to the rural areas, I jumped at Shelagh’s invitation to accompany her family back to Katete and piled myself in to the Land Cruiser alongside the three remaining children, Shelagh, Sam, Ian, two new VSO (the British equivalent to the Peace Corps) volunteers, and all of the family’s accumulated chattel. Chiko and Jim slept on stacked foam mattresses for most of the ride, a tangle of bony elbows and knees and Calvin-and-Hobbes feet, their pale English skin – remarkably untouched by the harsh African sun – peeking out from beneath sundresses and shorts. Josh, poor wee one, sat in mum’s lap for the ride, projectile vomiting when he wasn’t crying out in pain (he did, in the end, get himself in to quite a fix with all his exploring – climbed up in to the bidet in the master bathroom while mom was in the shower and turned on the hot tap, sustaining second-degree burns when he couldn’t get himself out and she couldn’t get to him fast enough).There were no vacancies at any of the guest houses so I’m staying with Shelagh and the family, amidst all the organized chaos, working at the dining room table or on the bed under the mosquito net in eldest daughter Amy’s room, analyzing the multiple data capture systems the hospital has and trying to figure out if there’s a way to get them all talking to each other. It’s fun. Er, mostly... As much fun as one can have with three (sometimes four, when V comes around) screaming children running around and Love Actually playing on continuous loop, at full volume, over and over and over. (Seriously – we watched it three times in a row on Friday. In a row.) Not that I don’t enjoy Love Actually - it is, in fact, one of my favorite films - but you try watching it that many times and see if you still like it.
Besides which, it mocks me, this film (why couldn’t they have watched, say, The Lord of the Rings or Bob the Builder on repeat? oh wait a minute, no – they did…). Mocks my lamentable, perpetual singleness. If only because, for the moment (a very long moment, it feels like), I long for nothing so much as someone who will set my own heart aflame and turn up on my doorstep on Christmas (or Easter or Flag Day or, I don’t know, yesterday) with placards vowing that he’ll love me until I’m long past dead and gone.
Not that that’s why I came to Africa. In fact, I came to Africa - among a few other, ostensibly nobler reasons - for precisely the opposite. I came, at least in part, to put to rest the interminable post-heartbreak navel-gazing at which I’m so masterfully, distressingly practiced; to start living life instead of waiting for it to happen to me; to look outward instead of in; to – if I may be so bold – get the f*ck out of my own way. I expected I’d be too busy, too knee-deeply buried in the proverbial salt-mines to worry about such frivolity. But, as my last post pointed out, if there’s one thing I (unexpectedly) seem to have here, it’s heaps and heaps of time. So – apparently – here I go again.
I suppose, though, when there is one thing for which you long, one fundamental ache that gnaws at you, some itch you need scratched – whether it’s for love or friendship or community or to collect the complete set of first edition Marvel Comics – and you can’t quite seem wrap your fingers around it, it doesn’t matter how far or fast you run because – what’s that saying? – wherever you go, there you are. And every film you watch, every song you hear, every book you read will remind you of its absence.
Which brings me to Three Junes. I have never – if you can indulge my hyperbole for a moment – had a book so precisely write the landscape of my own bruised heart, its certain fingers
deftly, gently pressing those bruises and bringing in to painfully tender relief my own accumulated sorrows (if not specifically in deed than certainly in sentiment). Exquisitely crafted, delicately but unflinchingly honest, it haunts the hollows of my heart, sparks new motivation, resurrects old longings – in short, it is the book I have always wanted to write. I cried for most of the last third (the final, eponymous June), and then for a good 45 minutes after I finally turned the last page and hucked it across the room in a fit of childish self-pity.And so it goes, my journey. Expected and unexpected, high and low, everything new and old and new again.
Picture 1: V
Picture 2: Chiko (and parts of Jim) in the Land Cruiser
Picture 3: The "Irish" (sans V, who's hiding behind Lili) and friends
Picture 4: Herd of oxen near the St. Francis market
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