Home again after a whirl wind trip to Maine. The scenery was beautiful, but it was even more special spending time with my friends from college. Years have passed and left a mark -- at least two of us were icing various body parts after a day of walking -- but we fell into easy conversation and step beside each other.
Write about a day spent with friends.
One final summer trip to complete in my vacation tryptic: Georgia, Hawaii and now Maine. This time I am off to a reunion of college friends. It’s been awhile since we’ve all been together, but it doesn’t feel that way. I know we’ve grown and changed, gone on to have jobs and kids and new responsibilities, but it feels like we are still the same “Midd Kids” we were over 20 years ago when we first met at Middlebury College. I’m not talking about the passage of time here, that feeling we so often have of where did the years go, I still feel so young. I’m talking about something else, a stability of character I see in my friends.
I’m not sure when it began with me, but I’ve lived most of my life fearing that the sand would shift beneath me, not quite sure that I could trust things to be the same today as they were yesterday. Of course, you never can. Life is always about change, but I’m talking about an inability to quite trust my surroundings. I remember getting sick for two weeks in middle school and when I returned friendships and alliances had rearranged themselves, so suddenly I found myself out instead of in. My family’s finances and fortunes were always changing so I literally wasn’t sure from month to month whether it would be feast or famine. Boundaries were amorphous and when crises loomed I learned that people did not always perform as expected. I learned to live with paradox and found that it was possible, but not always easy and so, I sometimes still worry that the world will turn upside down when I least expect it.
This past week when I came home from Hana, I found my friend Joan busy in the process of packing up her old house and moving to her new. She has owned both for several years now – her new house just down the drive from the old. But suddenly, her daughter had arrived and they were settling financial issues and decorating. She informed me her daughter would be returning in another week to go to a doctor’s appointment and suddenly I found myself asking, “Are you okay? You’re not dying and not telling me are you?” Of course, I’m not completely crazy to ask this, Joan is just the type of person who would not say. But she reassured me that she was fine, just a check up and the flurry of activity to settle up her finances no doubt came from the fact that her daughter’s mother-in-law had passed away a few weeks ago, leaving her affairs unsettled. Joan’s children just happened to be helping their mother. Everything is okay.
And, so when I say these college friends haven’t seemed to change what I mean to say is that to me they seem stable, true, sure, certain, reliable. They have grown, but they seem to remain fundamentally who they have always been. I can count on them to be the funny, quirky, intelligent, interesting people that I have always known and I love them for it. I am looking forward to sharing the next few days with them and discovering how their lives have changed, while relishing the fact that I still know who they are.
Birth and death are bookends
I see that here.
A nursery of growing trees
In ordered rows
Conjures images of gravestones
A cemetery in my mind.
I see the wildflowers cast around them
And reminisce of florists and bouquets
Placed on the graves of those I’ve loved.
Not as morbid as it sounds
Just a passing note
That birth and death
Often reminds us of each other.
Walking through the husks I spotted them, a row of flaxen blondes amidst the field of redheads. They seemed shy compared to their wild cousins. Lean and straight with yellow silky spikes as opposed to the sweaty strands of their ginger friends. I wondered why only these five had developed this yellow hue, why they hid in this low straight row, wallflowers, seemingly sitting out their cousins’ headbangers’ dance.
My father and my joint venture into gardening this summer is bearing fruit, literally, as our tomatoes begin to ripen.
It is exciting to be able to go outside and pick something that you have helped to grow, but the true meaning of this project was creating and working toward something with my father. At first, I thought it was a strange idea -- his four plants placed in our former flower bed. Then, I was bothered by the nuisance -- with his frequent traveling they became mine to nurture. Next, I found myself caught up in their care, making sure they were watered, watching them flower. Then, I was gone, my turn to travel. My father saw them to fruition and as he flew out again I was left to marvel at how far we've come.
Staring at the azure sky and sea, broken by white and yellow beams of sunlight and splashes of purple, pink, red and yellow flowers, I asked one of my Hawaiian friends if she woke every morning in awe of how beautiful her home was or if all this beauty t had become commonplace to her. She answered me honestly that on most days she didn’t think about it. It was home and she had kids to take care of and a job to do. I nodded, it was the answer I expected even though facing the sparkling, sun-soaked water, it was hard to believe.
But, I understood her sentiments, knowing that in the hustle of everyday life I often didn’t take the time to soak in Vermont’s green mountains, to delight in the trees and wildflowers around me, the mooing of cows, the song of grasshoppers.
And, so I have been making a concerted effort to do so since I returned home. Having walked a lot in Hana, I decided to continue the tradition here. Using the time not only to exercise and pray, but also to notice the world around me.
Today, I set off to walk the stretch of road the people in my town call “The Boulevard.” It is a three-mile loop in back of my house that takes you around through the center of town and back again. Largely rural with a few paved spots, it is not exactly what a city-dweller would consider a boulevard, but it passes for one here.
I snapped some pictures as I walked and realized that I too, have become immune to a smorgasbord of beauty around me. On an average day it may not be as colorful or as brilliant as what I viewed in Hana, but like a subtle pastel or watercolor, the landscape is full of soft color and unappreciated beauty.
I am home from Hana, albeit briefly. I leave on Tuesday for a reunion with college friends in Maine. It is hard to leave Hana behind. It has become a part of my heart. These words come so easily, can sound so cliché, but they are also true. In many ways it is a town very similar to my own – small, rural, a place where everyone knows everyone. On a lush green summer day or blanketed beneath large white flakes of snow, Vermont has its own beauty, although Hana gleams with flowers, fruits, water and sun. I walk the roads there and stumble upon plumeria and hibiscus. Here, it is wildflowers – black-eyed susans and husks of growing corn. The name of my town is Bethel, House of God. They call Hana “Heavenly Hana” and a black cross of lava stares down on the town. It is difficult not to draw symbolism from this while on a mission’s trip there. I inhale Hana’s beauty there until it has become a part of me: Hana Church, which has sprung from the work we’ve done, the young men playing in the band and leading worship, the young children, embracing me and calling my name. Our Hawaiian Ohana we call them, but this time as I greet them and am swallowed by their arms and cries, I make no such distinction. They are simply family. We are one church, one heart. Toward the end of our week in Hana we rose early to watch the sunrise over the town from the Hana Cross. Below is a video of our drive to the cross.
Home, walking through a sun-kissed field, I stumble upon them
in spontaneous concert, quiet husks swaying in the breeze.
They whisper lyrics to each other
One blushed moptop leaning into the next.
The silky fibers mingle like the sweaty strands of longhaired boys
An almost silent song.
The brush of bodies sweeps me up and carries me along.
I am happy as sun and breeze breathe hot air on my neck
To match their rhythm
To join their windswept dance.
This picture encapsulates what the missions trip is all about for me.
And, the real reason we go to Hana...The People
