wade in the water

I don't really know how to ease back into this after being absent so long. Though is 20 days long?

I remember once, I was in second grade and my mom was the eighth grade teacher at another school. Her students had a field trip (?) to a large indoor pool in town, and she brought me along, I can't remember why, but it was exciting and special to go. The giant eighth graders were splashing and palling around with me, I felt like a million bucks, and then a group shouted for me to come into the water where they were. It was the deep end, foreign territory, but standing there in my purple two-piece, with a little white ruffle, I wanted to be bold so I plugged my nose and jumped in, a gangly streak of false bravado. Twenty odd years later, I can still remember the shock and sensation of plunging down so deeply, the dark warm water accepting me, sinking sinking sinking, the blinking alarm in my head screeching, When will the down part stop?! It was scary and I got a noseful of chlorine, which is the worst feeling in the world, tangy and painful, water where water should not be, too close to the brain.

Choking and coughing, I surfaced and flailed for the wall; some of those kindly Lutheran kids hefted me up back onto the concrete deck where my towel lay. A harrowing experience but I lived and - in any case - had breached the deep end.

So here I am three paragraphs in, which is to say: It may not be pretty but sometimes you just gotta jump.

When things are most difficult, my muse fails, as March - June 2007 will testify. This past month has also been a tough spell, I had no will to write and then my internet died for a week. The nice thing is I can let myself off the hook because I don't have to account for everything, even if it were possible.

I'm pleased today is Thanksgiving. I got off the phone with the Buschena family just now, all five of them. They made me smile and laugh and reminded me - today, right now, at this moment - all is okay with the world.

I had forgotten about Thanksgiving until two North American friends - Laura and Dara - stopped by in the morning and wished me a happy one. Yesterday evening, the neighbor’s renegade dog killed my black hen, Branca - or nearly killed her, I should say, she was dealt a mortal wound to her back, so I had to ask Vumba to finish the job for me. I cooked and deboned her last night, which meant that this morning - on the very day in which we consume birds to illustrate thankfulness - I had just such a bird in my freezer, ready to eat. I whipped up some mashed potatoes and biscuits, opened a can of corn, and it was as lovely a meal, with two very dear friends, as one could hope for. Dara had even picked up a package in the mail which contained "Thanks Be To God" cornucopia napkins. As we raised our wine glasses of water to the sky, admiring the Zimbabwean plum jam they brought, I was struck by the occasional sweetness of life, the goodness of little touches. Especially when Laura did all the dishes afterward.

Keeping on. Moving on. We must continue to move on. That's what Elizabeth Elliott said after Amazonian Indians killed her husband on a sandy river beach in the 1950s. She looked around in the aftermath, and said to herself: I must do the next thing. It may have been weeding the garden. I think that was the point. I think of that often.

Here in Mozambique, this is what is coming soon... the rainy season. Some say it's late this year. I made this clip last year and saved it for the end of our driest days, to remind me of what is surely coming. I captured most of this footage at the orphan day center I work with in Beira, during a soggy training we put on for their preschool teachers.

On the way. Keep on.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.