Intertwined.
Over the last few days, my heart and mind have been full of thoughts and emotions about saying goodbye to our firstborn. Mixed in are thoughts and grief for Afghani women, children, and men. These feelings tumble over one another without much awareness of their separateness, and this is the way life is.
Now that Chinua and Kai have successfully made their way to the U.S. (plane should touch down any minute now) my mind is becoming a little less crowded and I can start to tidy the space inside. I’m shelving the logistics (some are bookmarked and need to be pulled back out), sweeping the leftover bits of conversations and unfinished thoughts out the back door. And now I’m sitting here, quietly, looking at all the bits of pottery and scraps of paper I have in front of me.
I have loss. I have excitement and vicarious joy. I have visceral mothery feelings that don’t fit easily in any space. Raising teenagers is good practice for releasing them. I’ve been working on shielding the adoring eyes for years now, overriding the “too-muchness” of my love with oh-so-casual jokes or good food or an arm over a shoulder. And sometimes I can’t hold it back and they know how to put up with that, too.
Meanwhile, the world turns, and Kai’s transition to adulthood is a move as natural and healthy as birth. My own private earth-shaking occurs with love and freedom, contrasted with genuine tragedy in the world.
I think about Afghan people who are also boarding planes, quickly and not because of maturation but because of danger, reluctantly leaving home: refugees seeking hope in places that are not always welcoming to them. Home is not safe and that thought is so heartbreaking that it can scarcely be pulled out. I look at it, imagine it, and place it gently back on the table, praying that every displaced person will find the warmth of community as my family has known it.
My children have grown up in the kind light of community, and every step forward has been a gift from the many beautiful humans in our lives. Kai’s education in Chiang Mai was like this, with houseparents and other people who gave to his experience there. Now he is going straight into the arms of friends who have known him since birth.
My friend Joy called him by his full name when we were talking over our plans, because she was there when Chinua and I dreamed of Kai and who he would be, when we whispered the name possibilities and tried saying them in different voices to hear them better. He will stay with Joy for some months. He will get to know and be a big cousin to her little ones. This circle is so beautiful to me, so precious. It will not be perfect, or paradise. It is real, and full of love and repair.
People don’t want to flee. They flee when it is necessary, when the mark of terror is present in a way that leaving familiar air is the only option. I think of the mother who is staying, who is preparing food with tears on her face.
She is my sister. I love her. We are loved by the same Divine love, our existence is contingent on that Love. I want to be her community. I want her to be okay. None of this tragedy is simple or a gotcha. There is no limit to God’s sorrow over us, the way we break things, our losses, our tenderness.
Back in my room, I also have the temptation to look at a rather ugly stack of paper in the corner, to leaf through regrets or worry over what has been left undone in raising my firstborn. I will not dwell on that yellowing stack, mainly because I now understand that life is not transactional. It does not fit into rules of time and our tight barriers of definition. “You only get a little time with them,” is the saying, and in a way it is true. But it is not our job to pour the perfect ingredients in and wait for the sparkling product that will come. People are not products. And our time with them is not something that can be measured that way. I will miss my son. And I know that we are woven into one another, that there will be distance and closeness in the years ahead of us. We are twenty-two years different in age. God-willing, we will be old together, the way my father and grandfather were.
I am good friends with Joy and I was friends with her parents. They were my first visitors after I had Kai. Her dad, Peter, passed away last year, which stole my breath. It is earth-shaking to lose him. I moved away from Joy years ago, and we saw each other over the years, and now my son is moving in with her and her husband for a time, and he will get to know her young children, and they will remember living with him, and hopefully her mother, Gale, will be able to come and spend some time with us here in Thailand, and we are all woven together. This is how relationships work, and this is the kingdom of God, and it is not a pie.
Joy volunteered as a teacher in a refugee detention center in Bali for a couple of years. I know it was hard for her— she was powerless against the rules of the detention space, and the people held there, some of them from Afghanistan, were powerless also. I know she threw herself into love and fun and dignity for the people she worked with there. I know it has shaped her heart in particular ways, that she is soft to grief. I know that she and her husband were able to travel to visit some of the families when they were resettled in Australia, and that this brought joy to her heart. I know that the welcome from the refugee families was generous and big-hearted, that they shared food and stories and love for her toddler son.
I think about my sisters in Afghanistan, the beautiful country of big skies, of tribes and creativity and this horrible set of laws, and I want to be closer, not farther. How can we touch one another’s pain? Life is never one thing. It is big. God holds it all close. The pain and beauty of the world sit very close together. I don’t understand it but I am here for it.
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To donate, hear more from Afghani voices, or learn more about help in Afghanistan, here are some links:
@sincerelynooria on Instagram
Learn about community sponsorship of refugees here.
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