I’m bad at it. I hate it, really. Don’t do well At All. That’s the realization I’ve come to after two full days of a kind of funk, a simmering malaise. There’s no other explanation. I’m not hungry, not tired, not in need of …. other things. In fact, I have Everything In The World to be thankful for, and am.
It’s not that I don’t want to be home. I do. Did. Knew we needed to go home. The children needed it, I needed it, if only in order to manage them better.
And I love it here. I love my house, love my friends, love North Carolina’s insistence on Heat, and the singing locusts, and the embrace of the nighttime air.
Of course, I love it out there on Long Island, too. You all know that. I love my parents’ house, the air, the wind, the salt. The people. That’s the hardest part about leaving, Hands Down.
But still, there was trouble for me in arriving on Long Island, a place so layered with memories that I had to take a few days to sift out the past from the present. And Then I could really enjoy it. Which I did.
And I know that, in a few more days, I’ll be used to being home, and Fully Glad to be here.
I sat next to Rachel in church this morning. We share two friends who gave birth on July 1st; another friend of mine from high school did the same thing. Talk about transition: those three families will be in the throes for some time to come. And in today’s church service we said farewell to Kyama and Wambui, a Kenyan pastor and his wife who have been visiting and serving at our church for a year. For Rachel, Wambui’s departure marks at least her third friend who’s moving away in less than three weeks. And coming up, in less than two weeks more, our friends Steven and Amy leave for South Africa.
Sigh.
I’ll sort through it, get past it, Overcome. But meanwhile, I am reminded of what transition always reminds me of: Here is not Home. Not Long Island, with my entire family, nor in Pennsylvania, with all of Bill’s family, nor in North Carolina, though this is my permanent address. No, we aren’t Home. Not Yet.