Things Left Unwritten:

Things like walking to the market after a day of rain. The path is as slick as the ice it can’t even imagine, but the grass to the sides disguises deep mud that swallows my boots whole and only let go with a loud suck of protest. In a day or two the path will be damp and cracked and give softly like an old woman’s belly when I walk over it. But for now I only get my flour and sugar home with a fight.

Things like my firstborn laughing crazily on top of the construction sand pile first thing in the morning. She is wearing fairy band-aids on both knees, one Hello Kitty rainboot and a purple nighty that says “Mommy’s Wild Child.” She has sand in her hair.

Things like walking through the rooms of our unfinished house. The walls are grey checkered cement blocks, not yet plastered. I wonder where we will put the Christmas tree. And what we will make it out of.

Things like reading emails outside at night as I swat bugs away from the computer screen. I am crying because they are from friends, sisters, who live eight thousand miles away and who work in law firms, hospitals and carpeted living rooms and yet who also, inexplicably, understand.

Things like long walks in the afternoon with the girls. Under a huge tree we inspect the mossy headstones of missionaries who are buried here – a couple in the forties when Italians bombed a British outpost, and a doctor in 2009 who grew sick and died overnight. Annabelle tries to catch frogs while Mary Katherine dozes.

Things like tiny glasses of mint tea on a tin platter under a tree with friends who stopped by because they heard I was unwell and wanted me to know they were praying. We talk, with varying degrees of ineptitude, in three languages about rain and babies and language.

Things like the black and brown striped piglet who gets in the yard several times a day and who knows I throw rocks like a girl and won’t budge unless I run after him yelling with a stick at which point he will shuffle begrudgingly back under the fence with a grunt of annoyance (or amusement, I am not sure which).

Things like the feel and smell of my bread dough, yeasty and warm on my floury board. It is heavy like a baby in my hands. I knead into it all the frustrations and fears and deep contentment of the day and it grows tougher and firmer in my grip. Later I fan black lumps of charcoal until they glow and turn my dough into crusty golden brown bread.

Things like the swarms of termites that pour out of the ground after a heavy rain like a thousand different moments and stories. Like the kids that grab them out of the sky and pop them into their mouths, I snatch a few from time to time. But the rest all flutter by and fan out into the cloudy sky only to lose their wings after a night and fall back to the earth.