Sunday

It's almost impossible for me to remember what life was like before Sunday. There has been no way to mark the days since. No school, meetings cancelled, graduations on hold, playdates forgotten. Today was the first day since Sunday that there was something to plan for. It was a funeral.

It's also hard for me to remember right now that there are other things going on in the world. Reading updates from others about life as it was, life as it should be (whatever that means) causes irrational frustration. Anger, even. Maybe it's because right now, here in Joplin we are so removed from the trivial. Or maybe it's because I have removed myself from the trivial because of the overwhelming burden of guilt I feel ( I lost nothing when so many lost everything). Last week, I worried about getting my kids' teacher gifts ready in time, or the chipped paint in the hallway, or the way my upper arm flab seems lately to sway in the breeze. But that was before. There is only here and now, doing what we can, though it will never seem like enough because the well of need is so deep. There is a world outside of Joplin, Missouri, but right now it is hard for me to fathom.
This is an amazing community. A relative newcomer, I stand on the periphery in awe of all of the ways that people are working together because they love this town. Because they love their neighbor. Amelia's school sent people door to door to account for the whereabouts of every child who had not been heard from. Reconstruction has already begun on several of the school buildings to be ready in time for next year. Everywhere you turn restaurants offer free food. Free bottled water is stacked in parking lots for whoever may need it. After only five days, the major aid distribution centers stopped taking item donations because they were at capacity. There was standing room only to celebrate the loss of a beautiful and innocent life, ripped away by the tornado. There are tears of joy mixed with tears of grief.

I understand now why we are here in Joplin. I am bonded to this community, for better or for worse, and in a way I could never have imagined this time last week. Out of the chaos, there is hope in the new week that is to come. A new Sunday, a new week is on its way.

Moving On...

Home. It's a city named after a citrus in Southern California, comfortable and worn in, it feels like childhood. It's a town on the Hungarian plains, lovely and complicated, both in language and inhabitants, a place of independence and personal discovery. It's a suburb of San Diego, sanitized and homogenous, my first baby's first home. It's a small, charming Southern town, a kind of living museum, where neighbors quickly become family. These are the places I have lived, the places that have shaped me, the places that have become part of the very fiber of my being.

Our latest move, even ten months later, has left me stunned and saddened, longing for a place where I no longer belong. And it got me thinking about the definition of home, mostly because I have felt so homeless. Each move brings with it a little death, a falling away of a certain way of life. You can always return to a place you once called home, but those places are forever changed: stores close up or open for business, people move or remodel, relationships evolve to accommodate the distance, or sometimes fade away entirely. And there is inevitably a time of loss before the regeneration can begin in a new community. Some losses are deeper and more indelible than others. This one, for one reason or another, hit me hard. A long winter.

But there are buds on the trees. My winter is giving way to spring. Slowly. There are new friends at the park, and familiar, loving faces at church. There is a porch swing and long talks with my husband. There are daily walks to the neighborhood school, and a great park down the street. And there are swim lessons and soccer games, play dates, birthday parties, and school carnivals. There is a new routine, a new normal, and there is comfort in that.

With each move, I am reminded in a very clear and tangible way that ultimately, and no matter how badly we long for it, we do not have a permanent home here on earth. We are just passing through. And while we long for the eternal, we should not live for it, just as we should not live only for the past. Thus, home is now; home is the present.

Home is my little redhead with the missing bottom tooth who loves Little House on the Prairie and Strawberry Shortcake, whose little fingers are perpetually stained with marker. It is the little girl with the enormous brown eyes and runny nose, who has an insatiable need for scotch tape and bedtime renditions of "You're a Grand Old Flag." Home is my sweet, blue eyed boy who wants nothing more than to nurse, eat his prunes, and laugh at his sisters. And it is the man with the quirky sense of humor and cute dimples who promised to always love me and actually does, even though I'm covered in spit up ninety percent of the time and lacking regular access to a shower. They are my base, my comfy socks, my heart, my home.