Homesickness and Momma

I’m a little overdue for a post and I’ve been thinking over the past couple of weeks about what I wanted to write about. A few events have taken place during that time, a few of which I’ll talk about in this post, but the one subject that’s been consistently on my mind is my mom. Before you go “ahhhh,” her being on my mind isn’t because I’m a great son or super thoughtful. It’s because she emails me everyday.

I’ll get to my lovely mom in a bit, but to back up a bit to explain why my mom and her emails have been on my mind, I must admit that I (too) easily get homesick. It may seem a little weird that I planned a 6-month stint to a country where I don’t know anyone and don’t know the language given how homesick I know I get, but the scariness is a part of why I thought it would be a good learning experience. But knowing that it’s a good challenge doesn’t automatically make it easier to be away from home. (Side note: I told a friend I was homesick, and he appropriately responded, “it’s only been a month!” I know it seems weird to be homesick in month 1 of 6, but I think the knowledge that it will be another 5 months is what weighs more heavily than the single month away. Also, I know I’m irrational sometimes (i.e., always), so there’s that, too.)

There was a Friday a couple weeks back where I had the day off. Generally a day off is good, but for me being on my own, busyness is a good thing because it keeps me occupied. I actually dread a lot of free time because it becomes a time where it’s just me and my thoughts and my thoughts always return to the people I miss back home. That Friday, my mind veered home so much so that I started looking at old email threads with friends and family to drum up memories of my community.  (As an aside, I actually loved that I was pushed to this because there were so many memories I had forgotten that made me laugh and smile when I re-discovered them.)

In the midst of this little bout of missing home, I actually got a pleasant little surprise that worked out so perfectly. There’s a big Buddhist holiday in Cambodia call Pchum Ben where everyone goes back to their home province. I didn’t know this was happening until the week before, when I learned that I’d have a week off of work. Michael invited me to go to his home province with him, but he had been taking care of me so much the first few weeks, I wanted to give him some nice quality family time without having to accommodate the needy American who crashes things. Instead, I was reminded that a few of my very closest friends would be in Taiwan on the exact week of Pchum Ben. So during the holiday week, I flew out to meet them and I don’t know of a less corny way to put it, but being around them just really fed my soul (*uuggggghhhhhhh, groooooaaaaaaan*).

It was really an awesome trip. I forgot how much I enjoyed Taiwan and its food stalls and night markets. My first ever overseas trip was to Taiwan over 9 years ago (with one of my friends who was on this trip, too), so it felt a little nostalgic being back. But I honestly would’ve been as happy if I had just sat in a room with my friends. There are few things better than to be simply with people you know and love and that know and love you. I easily forget how important people in my life are when I’m home, but I’m glad that me being away has reminded me of how good I have it and to appreciate and acknowledge that a bit more.

OK, I’m on like paragraph 5 of my non-mom tangent, but trust me it ties together. The Taiwan trip included 3 babies! It was so great seeing my friends (some of who I’ve known since I was 14) in action as great parents. And to see just how much effort and care my friends took to be good parents brought my memories full circle back to my mom and what she had to deal with when Kert and I were kids. OK, tangent/context/backstory over.

So good to see these faces!

She just gets me.

I’ve asked my mom what I was like a child, and before she starts, she always lets out a deep sigh and looks off into the distance as if affected by PTSD before she says, “Baby, you were so hard. You made mom so tired.” I was not a good child. Every picture of me as a kid is either blurry because I was constantly hyper and running around, or showed me sweating profusely because of said constant activity. And my reign of terror didn’t stop when I slept. You’d think me sleeping would be a nice break for my mom, but nope, my ability to tire my mom out knew no bounds. I was a bed-wetter until 3^rd grade or so (shout out to Sarah Silverman!) and most nights I would wet my bed, then move to my mom’s bed and wet hers. What a freaking nightmare I was. Seeing my friends in action in Taiwan was a good reminder of what a superstar my mom was/is in taking care of Kert and me.

OK, let’s jump back in time again a bit more. Last year in my small group, we were discussing faithfulness and what that looked like in our lives. I was the first to share because I knew exactly who personified that trait in my life: my mom. I didn’t always appreciate this trait in my mom, because it was such a subtle constant presence that I didn’t even know it was there. And I actually remembering when I was younger that I wish my mom had different traits like being more charismatic or being able to offer sage advice – traits I saw in other parents that I felt were very attractive. But there is nothing I would trade for my mom. Other moms can tell jokes that have any semblance of logic, I’ll take my mom’s faithfulness and nonsense, goofy humor any day of the week.

I’m sad that it took me so long to recognize how amazing my mom is, but faithfulness is definitely what she shows my brother and me. You know people who do loving and caring things out of the “goodness of their hearts”, but (not that) deep down want to be acknowledged or thanked for it? That’s most of us, (including me) and it’s natural, but that’s not my mom. Whenever I come home, she automatically will cook me something. Even if I say I’m not hungry, and even if she was busy or sleeping. And when she brings it out after I say I’m not hungry, I act like a little spoiled child and ask her why she cooked when I said I wasn’t hungry. And she’s un-phased – she does it because she loves me and my spoiled/negative response does nothing to change this. If I were my mom responding to bratty Pert, I would say, “Fine, then I won’t cook anymore.” But nope, she just wants to make sure I’m fed. And the next time I come over, she will cook for me again with zero expectations from me expressing gratitude. I’ll meet those expectations (I’m working on this), and then she’ll forget that and will cook for me the next time after that and the next time after that without even hinting at wanting to be thanked. She’s just a constant in my life providing for me and loving me regardless of what I give back.

Which brings me back to her daily emails. Back home, my mom would text me a greeting and/or bible verse everyday, and even though I would appreciate it, it was just another thing that happened in my busy day, and I didn’t really need to hear from my mom at 7am anyway. My friend Tiffany (who also acts as my conscience most of the time) said I should respond back to my mom to thank her when she texts me. But it was just another thing, plus my mom already knew I loved her so it was fine. But since coming out here, my mom has continued sending me daily notes over email (always starting with “Dear Son” and ending with “Enjoy your Day! Love you, Mom”) and on those lonely days off feeling especially homesick, man is there nothing better than hearing from your mom. I’m getting better at thanking her for taking time to think of me, but even if I do nothing to show my gratitude, she’ll keep sending me notes everyday. Faithfulness.

She loves me, but even she won't stand idly by without asking me to shave/"shelve" my beard.

Probably my favorite picture of Kert, my mom and me. Plus it's one where I'm actually calm. Although I can guarantee you I'm the reason her glasses are all sideways like that.

Taco Tuesday!

I’m not going to delve into my mom’s story, but she has sacrificed a lot of her life and goals for our family. And it has rarely been smooth sailing. But there are few things that make me prouder than hearing her say that even though things haven’t always been easy, she is so happy to be Kert’s and my mom.

Mom, I’m thankful for your faithfulness in my life and I love you dearly. Sorry for peeing in your bed. 

"Baby" by Anne Lamott

I just felt like being a little lazy today, so I'm copying and pasting one of my favorite chapters of any book I've ever read. I've read this chapter probably at least 10 times (and the book "Traveling Mercies" only once) and it affects me the same amount each time I read it. But after re-reading it a week ago, it meant something a little different this time around given what I'm doing here in Cambodia.

I'm sure you'll get something different out of it than I do, but it's something beautiful I'm always happy to share (as some of my friends can already attest to :)).

BABY 

I have a story about alchemy.

Sam and I were an hour from shore on the Sea of Cortez last year. We were on a snorkeling expedition to Seal Island, where we had gone with twenty other people to swim with the seals. Sam was the only kid, and there was only one child’s wet suit, and it was just a crummy pretend wet suit. First of all, it was bright pink, which I told Sam was considered an extremely manly color in Mexico. But the main problem was that it had no arms or legs, just a torso, and it was very thin. It couldn’t be very insulated. So when we anchored off Seal Rock and everyone else got in the water and began bobbing along in their thick intensely buoyant wet suits, I got a sinking sensation.

But I am old and tough, and I said a little prayer and climbed off the tailgate of the cruise boat into the frigid water. By then almost everyone else was already in the cove where the seals were lounging around on the rocks, barking like drunken guard dogs. Sam was more excited than I can remember him being in a long time. He stood there on the boat in his snorkeling mask and his manly bright pink wet suit, with his skinny little arms and legs, looking like a cross between Jacques Cousteau and Pee-Wee Herman. And then he slid into the water beside me.

God, it was cold. And the current was stronger than I had imagined; it was so hard to tread water without being moved along in the flow that I felt really afraid. It became clear that Sam would need me to hold onto him while we were in the water, whereas I had been imagining that we would swim along together side by side. But courage is fear that has said its prayers, and so I prayed and kept one arm around him and we bobbed in place for a moment as best we could. Sam is a very strong swimmer for a young boy, and finally we began swimming to the cove. Dozens of seals barked from the rocks, and we headed toward them, toward the other people who were in the water right near them. But after we’d gotten twenty feet away from the boat, Sam cried out in despair that one of his flippers had come off, and as I peered through the bottomless water I could see it below us floating downward to the depths. I almost let him go to retrieve it, but it didn’t make sense to leave Sam at the surface even for an instant in his crappy pink nonbuoyant wet suit while I went after it, so I watched the flipper sink.

We bobbed together for a moment, me and my boy, and the tide was pushing us along, not toward shore but toward the sea. By then I was hearing the soundtrack of Jaws beginning to play, and I had to decide whether to make a break for the cove where the seals were or to head back to the boat. Sam begged that we swim toward the seals, and my head thought we could do it but my heart was afraid.

And so we headed back. I kept hoping that someone would swim up alongside us, a big guy who was such a strong swimmer that he could accompany Sam to the cove, but no one came.

We reached the cruise boat, got out of the water, and sat on the tailgate. Sam’s shoulders were hunched together, little wings in pink polyurethane, and he bit his lower lip, pretending to be interested in something way out over the horizon. And I said to God, “Do something—I mean, for God’s sake.” About five minutes later, the snorkeling guide Rafael came over to say he’d take Sam with him when he headed over and that if I wanted, I could head off alone. Sam gaped at me with joy, and I was only a bit worried about whether Rafael could actually swim, or had a drug problem, or a history of pedophilia. But because Sam’s face had lit up again, I took a long deep breath and smiled. A few minutes later I adjusted my mask, slid off the boat, saluted Sam, and took off for the cove.

I swam ahead of Sam and Rafael to where everyone else was, looking back once or twice to locate the two of them in the water near the boat. My heart was so happy for Sam. Seals swam up quite close to me and barked and were properly silly, as they are paid to be, and it was goofy and sweet, and I bobbed along with the other people for a while and then tried to locate Sam in the water. I scanned the sea, looking for a little guy in a bright pink wet suit, but I couldn’t find him anywhere.

Finally I realized that this tiny blue bundle back on the tailgate of the boat was my boy. And I knew it hadn’t worked, that he hadn’t been big enough to make the swim after all.

I swam back. I was panting with the effort of swimming against the tide, and I realized it would have been terribly difficult for me to maneuver Sam back to the boat by myself. But my heart felt broken for him, and my mask got all fogged up. I climbed back on board and sat down beside him. He was wrapped in a blue towel. Someone had brought him a Coke and some tortilla chips. It turned out that he had started getting hypothermic a minute or two after getting in the water, and Rafael had brought him back to the boat. Sam was grievously disappointed but was being very brave. I was desperate to fix him, fix the situation, make everything happy again, and then I remembered this basic religious principle that God isn’t there to take away our suffering or our pain but to fill it with his or her presence, so I prayed for the health simply to enter into Sam’s disappointment and keep him company.

And it was about one moment later that the extraordinary happened: dozens of seals started swimming up to us. “Ahhh!” Sam cried, as the first seal bobbed a few feet away, and this time his cry was one of total amazement. And then another seal emerged a few feet away, right next to the first one, and they bobbed near each other, looking right at us with their moist doggy compassion. Sam started laughing, and I felt the moment go from cramped to very spacious. Sam cried out with laughter. The seals’ heads looked like old men’s bald pates that you wanted to pat. As they bobbed up and down in the water, hiding from us, then emerging again, I shook my fist at them and called out, “Hey—what d’ya think you are—a couple a comedians?” They kept swimming up to us for the next fifteen minutes, popping up out of the water like furry lightbulbs of a good idea.

After a while, all the adult humans swam back to the boat from the cove, and the seals went under the waves, and soon we were on our way back home.

Sam and I sat side by side on the deck as we sped along on the endless blue. Then Sam leaned forward, craning his neck to see something over the side of the boat, and I thought at first he imagined he saw the seals following him out here into the ocean, or maybe their friends or cousins, notified by underwater telegraph that a disappointed kid was passing by. But it wasn’t seals that he saw. Instead—God must have been in one of her show-offy moods—the next thing we knew, the boat was surrounded on both sides by dolphins, literally hundreds of dolphins leaping out of the waves everywhere you looked, in arcs like rainbows, vaulting in and out of the water like aquatic clowns. It was almost too much; I hung my head and laughed. Everyone on board was crying out in joy as more and more dolphins leapt on both sides of the boat; it was like the end of the Fourth of July when they set off every last firework they have, and a new explosion follows before the last has even disappeared.

When we were back in our room, I said, “Honey, you need to write this down so that we never forget what happened today.” He didn’t want to at first, as he does not really like writing very much and has a terrible time with spelling, so I had to bribe him with the promise of a virgin piña colada. Then he finally sat down and began to write. I lay on my bed pretending to read but watching him work: he is a very slow writer, looking like a thoughtful old person with arthritis and bad vision. After a while he got up from his desk to get his crayons, and then he drew a picture below his story, bending in very close to the page again, his face not more than two inches from the paper. I let him work in peace for as long as I could stand it. Then I said, “Honey, what are you drawing?”

“What do you think? I’m drawing dolphins.”

This is the story he wrote, painstakingly, above his drawing of the dolphins leaping over our boat: “I am going to see the seals. I took a boat to see the seals but I could not make it to the shore. But they came to me. And on the ride back we saw some dolphins and it was magic to us.”

So you see? Alchemy: dross to gold.

Lamott, Anne (2000-09-05). Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith