Beads

Last night we were invited to an iftar, a Ramadan fast-breaking at sunset. Our hosts were a group of refugees from the mountains to the West of us who arrived in town soon after the bombs started falling in their home area. They fled a couple of months ago, leaving loved ones behind and dodging government checkpoints along the way, arriving in our little town with little more than the clothes on their backs. Over two hundred are here now, thirty or so of which are practically camping on an NGO compound at the base of the mountain. And these were the ones who invited us to share a meal with them. 

Bryan and I arrived a little later than we had planned and food was served only minutes after we got there. Dan and Bryan were ushered to a courtyard with the other men where there were mats laid out for praying and eating. Laura and I stayed behind a woven grass wall in front of a mud hut with several other women where food was brought to us on a round metal tray. While we started into a dish of dates I joined in the conversation but watched out of the corner of my eye as Annabelle (“Hanna”) was bounced from one pair of arms to the next. She was long overdue for a nap and as I monitored her sleep-heavy eyes taking in her new surroundings, I prayed she would be gracious to these kind people. And whether by God’s miraculous grace or her infantile self-absorption, she drank up the attention, flashing a few groggy smiles between kisses and cheek pinches. At one point a stately woman began walking down the path away from us with my baby still in her arms. Dusk was already gently draping itself over us and I could just make out Annabelle’s white head bobbing contently against a black shoulder, moving slowly away from me before disappearing into the dark mouth of a small house. I returned to my food but kept glancing down the path, wondering if I was supposed to follow my child or stay where I was. I knew she was still within ear shot, and though the thought of watching a stranger in America walk away with my daughter into an unfamiliar house makes my stomach churn, it seems somehow perfectly natural in this setting. Minutes passed and then the woman carrying Annabelle reemerged and brought her all the way back to my arms. Annabelle sank into my lap and looked up as me as chuffed as a four month old can be because around her neck was tied a strand of black and white striped beads. “She’s a baby from our mountains now!” the woman declared and everyone laughed in approval. Annabelle was even rechristened “Kaka” for the evening, the name given to firstborn daughters in the Central Mountains. 

We ate together as the world sank into darkness, Khawaja and North African, Muslim and Christian, friends and strangers. And when the table was cleared we sat and talked. These women came from a place where the Arabic is much better than what is spoken here and I struggled to understand everything they said, especially when they were speaking to each other. But they were unbelievably gracious with my fumbling, letting misconjugated verbs and ill-prounounced vocabulary lay where they fell as the conversation moved on. After Laura and I exhausted our small talk about family and food and babies, the women began speaking amongst themselves about their home area. I had heard earlier that the government has started using chemical weapons against the inhabitants of the mountains and had read only that morning that 200,000 people have now been displaced, injured or killed in the conflict. As the women softly talked to and over each other my ears ached with the strain of trying to understand. But it was like someone had held a match to a story in front of me, and I was left snatching singed fragments out of the breeze and trying to piece them together myself. I heard words like, hiding in the mountains, on the radio, antanovs dropping bombs, my people, your people, airplanes…

I was grateful for the dark at this point, as though hiding my face also hid my emptiness of words. Words in any language. All I could find was, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Malesh. Because really what do you say? And if you do say something, what would it mean to those who heard it? What do you say to the fasting refugees who lay their food in front of you and give gifts to your baby even as their homes are being destroyed and their loved ones killed? Do those words even exist? All I could find was thank you and I’m sorry. But I pray they could hear more than that.

Some time later when I rose with my sleeping baby to go, I glanced over the grass fence and saw Bryan huddled around a small computer screen with the other men, their faces lit blue by the screen. On the drive home he told me they were looking at photographs and video footage of the conflict in the Central Mountains. Someone had collected the images and smuggled them out. And amazingly, Bryan had come with a flash drive in his pocket and now, these images were with us too. After we put Annabelle to bed we sat around our own computer screen in the dark of our home and looked through them. I didn’t want to. To be honest I was terrified of what I was going to see. But I felt like it was all I could offer. I can’t protect these people from bombs. I can’t stop planes from flying overhead. I can’t even talk to them deeply in their own language about how they feel or what they think. But I can look at the pictures and see that their pain is real. I can take the singed pieces of story that I have found and show them to others, like you. 

I was right to be scared of the pictures. They were some of the most awful things I have ever seen. They were of women and children huddled in caves, hiding. They were of men on rope beds with holes torn through their bodies. They were of women lying twisted in the grass, their bloody tobes covering their faces. And there was a picture of children I cannot even bring myself to describe. Small children. With black and white beads around their necks. 

You know that feeling you get when you stub your toe really hard? There is an instant before the pain rushes up your foot that everything tingles and you feel the dread of the pain that is coming. That is how I felt, and still feel. Numb. And waiting for the pain to hit. And in this numbness I find myself wondering when it feels real. It didn’t feel real reading the news in America two years ago. It didn’t feel real hearing stories of what was happening a few hundred miles away from me now every day this week. And it didn’t feel real seeing the pictures of dead neighbors of my dinner hosts last night. When does it feel real? Would it feel real if bombs started falling here and I was running with my baby? Does it feel real for them? Or are they still waiting for the pain to hit too...?

          

stress

It’s funny. So many times I sit down at the computer ready to write about some idea or thought that has been churning in my head for a few days – the experience of motherhood so far, meeting up with a dear friend in Nairobi, the current political situation in our home area now that the South is independent, yada, yada, yada – and yet it takes about two seconds for me to realize that what I thought I was thinking about is not what I was really thinking about at all and what I thought I was going to write about is not what I am going to end up writing about in the end afterall. Motherhood has made time for self-indulgent reflection on a computer screen harder to come by so my blogs may get a little less refined and a little more stream-of-consciousness as I rush to type and hit “publish” before someone wakes up from her increasingly short naps. So my apologies.  

I am stressed. There is no need to go into the details. It’s a lot of things, any one of which I feel like I could handle quite well on its own, maybe even if they showed up in pairs, but the flash mob of political insecurity, new baby, language learning (and re-learning), ever-changing travel-back-to-the-States-for-a-visit plans, temporarily difficult housing situation and the three million bug bites on my torso all together feel like a lot (okay, the last one isn’t really that big a deal but in context it feels far worse). And on top of the frustration of each of these things is the guilt that comes with knowing I chose them, and would choose them all over again in a heartbeat (with the exception of the bug bites). I want to live here in this house with no running water. I want to be in the middle of rebel-held territory in a political tenuous time. I want to learn (and re-learn) Arabic even if my brain occasionally explodes. And God help me, I want this precious baby that seems to be allergic to sleep as long as the sun is out because I love her so much my heart occasionally explodes right along with my brain. I want all these things so badly. So what right do I have to let them all make me want to scream bloody murder some days?

At least that is how I feel. In the rubble of my exploded brain I can still sift out enough logic to question how much sense that really makes. But I have inherited my mother’s superwoman demons and their own twisted logic still works astoundingly well on me. How can you be so weak? How can you be so (heaven forbid!) normal? I thought you were tough. Suck it up. Jog it off. Stuff in down and keep on trucking until things clear up. 

I suppose I should be grateful for opportunities like this where I am gracefully reminded that “superwoman” status for me is about as attainable as ten hours of uninterrupted sleep. I cannot do this on my own, nor should I want to. So really, maybe this season of stress is a blessing.  For one, I know it will soon pass, just like every other stress in life eventually does. But also, it makes me slow down and just concentrate on what is most important. Like being a good mama. And a good wife. Like taking a deep breath and admitting to a friend who has been there once or twice too, that yes, this is freaking hard. Like partly dreading going to visit a neighbor because I know my conversation skills are at the level of a four-year old, but going anyway. Like taking the time to frame a few family pictures and put much-loved books back on the shelf, even if they do get tossed right back in an evacuation bag here in a few weeks. The important stuff. Thank goodness for the stress that makes me see it. 

Happy birthday Bu!

My little sister Abigail turned nineteen yesterday. Nineteen. I can hardly believe it. I was almost ten years old when she was born so she has always been my baby sister. But a few months ago she finished up her first year in college as a pre-med student. And we were honored that she spent her first summer break with us in North Africa. Honestly, I don’t think there is a single other person in the world that could have lived with us for two months without either driving us crazy in the end, or, as is far more likely, gone stark raving mad themselves. As it turns out, Abigail did neither. She was an enormous help to me as a new mother, arriving at about the height or my new parent psychosis, and yet never once mocking my bipolar tendency to bemoan my daughter’s stubborn refusal to sleep followed immediately by my supreme gloating over her absolute perfection in every way, repeated three or four times in the course of an hour. She was the perfect nanny-aunt spending hours bouncing Annabelle while I cooked, or feeding her while I studied language. She was a fabulous sister, listening to me pour out the two years of backlogged thoughts and emotions that come with sisterlessness. She slept in a leaking mud hut with a hedgehog for a roommate and listened patiently while we negotiated her bride price with our good friend Ahmed. She ate sorghum and okra, covered her head and learned to ride a motorcycle. She gracefully received advice about where to hide if planes started dropping bombs and didn’t panic when she learned that the hospital where she was working would be a likely target. She took in everything with delight, curiosity, amusement and amazement and made me see my world through her eyes all over again too.

I asked Abigail to make a guest appearance on my blog and write about her experience shadowing the one doctor at the local hospital, but, sadly, she declined. I wish she would have though because I think her firsthand account of the things she saw at that hospital needs to be told to as wide an audience as possible. She would come home every day from her time there with the most outrageous stories (and pictures!) of the surgeries she had watched, the pregnant tummies she had palpated and the diseases she had seen firsthand. She saw a woman whose foot had been blown off when she dropped a heavy load of firewood on a landmine. She watched an abdominal surgery on a conscious two-week old baby. She scrubbed up and stood inches away from dozens of hemorrhoid, goiter and hydrocele surgeries (if you don’t know what that last one is, look it up. I promise it’s worth your time) and every day she came home more and more interested in what she was seeing and hearing and learning.

The most touching story Abigail told me was of the day she spent in the maternity ward. Two women were in labor simultaneously and the room was crowded with family members, traditional midwives and hospital staff. Abigail was asked to take her shoes off before she entered the dim room and place them next to the pile of muddy sandals. She hedged around the splatters of blood on the floor but stepped in something she said looked like porridge; she prayed it was. One woman was having a difficult breech delivery and the doctor had been called in to help. He was sitting on a stool, straining to twist and pull the two tiny limp legs that hung outside her body. Despite the midwives scolding her to be quiet, the woman writhed in pain and at one point, reached out and clung to Abigail’s hand while she stood by and watched helplessly. Abigail said the breech delivery was so horrifically fascinating that she hardly noticed the woman behind her, silently laboring to deliver her own child. Both babies were eventually pulled and pushed into the world and both were immediately rushed to a table for intensive care.  With some oxygen and stimulation the breech baby survived and was returned to his mother to nurse. The second baby however, died shortly his birth, despite everything that could be done under the circumstances. Abigail said the young mother received the news without response. Neither bereaved nor stoic, she accepted the news with an air of nonchalance. “I seemed more upset than she did,” Abigail said. And we wondered how many times a day that story is repeated in that little hospital.

I was amazed by Abigail this summer. After sitting through my first hydrocele surgery I would have been sending in my applications for law school as fast I could. And watching a mother receive news that her baby has just died while she sits in her bodily fluids next to a woman cradling her squalling new child…well, I’m not sure how I would have handled that. But Abigail handled it all, with strength and empathy. And after this summer, she’s no longer just interested in becoming a doctor, but now, maybe a surgeon. In a place where there are landmines. In a hospital with no running water or electricity. And I can’t help but think, Great. What have we done? The thought of my baby sister working in a hospital in some war-torn country makes my stomach turn, but honestly, it’s with both fear and pride. I am so grateful for the time we got to spend with Abigail this summer. I could write fourteen posts about the things we did together and remembered together and what they made me think about. But on her birthday I just wanted to say how thankful I am for Abigail, how proud I am to be her big sister and how much we miss you already. Thank goodness you have three more summers before med school. (: Happy birthday, Bu.     

Showing Bryan photos from a hydrocele surgery (you know you're curious...)

The Jessop's House

Sometimes when you have been looking forward to something for a long time, you build it up in your mind so much that it has no chance of ever being anything other than a disappointment. This past week my family got together on the coast of Kenya for the first time in over two years. We hadn’t seen each other since my sister Deborah’s wedding which, as anyone who has ever planned or been in a wedding knows, is hardly quality time. I had never been around Josh as a brother-in-law. Deborah had never been around Annabelle as an Aunt. We three girls hadn’t been together as sisters in way too long and my parents were way overdue for time with all of their overgrown chicks under their wings at once. We had been looking forward to those few days altogether through years of years of emails, texts, facebook messages and pixilated skype calls. The thought of being within hugging distance of every member of my immediate family for a few days was almost too good to be true. And I think we were all braced for the possibility that it just might be.

But it wasn’t. Last week was every bit as sweet as I could have hoped. The hours spent talking, eating, playing cards, playing with the baby, swimming and sticking our heads together for just one more picture were like a flavor you just want to keep savoring a little bit longer. What a joy it was to reminisce about old times and get to know each other all over again as adults, grandparents, fathers, mothers, husbands and wives. And though we would have been happy spending time together just about anywhere, it certainly didn’t hurt to be basking in each others company at the Jessop’s house. These family friends had been kind enough to invite us to stay with them when they heard we were passing through. Their home is forever etched in my mind, a haven on the beach, detached from reality and the normal passage of time.

The yellow stone house sits drunkenly on a coral cliff overlooking the ocean, clashing beautifully with the sprays of fuchsia bougainvillea that cascade madly down the rock face. If you stand on the back veranda and look through the jungly mango trees to your left, you can just make out the crumbling remains of minarets and well rims, the only fingerprints of a 14^th century village abandoned mysteriously hundreds of years ago, like an East African Roanoke. The rooms of the house are deep and cool and strung together as beads on a dropped string. And like the mesmerizing pages of a children’s “I Spy” book, they are full of everything a house by the sea should have: baskets of seashells, blue glass bottles full of sand, ceramic fish, spotted mirrors in driftwood frames, sea turtle bones, paintings of Dhows of the coast of Zanzibar and shelves overflowing with paperback novels with curling yellow pages. Salt breeze moves constantly through the open windows brushing against unseen windchimes as it slinks by.

We spent three nights at this house together. And on the third day, the afternoon before Bryan, Annabelle and I were to fly back to Nairobi while the rest of the family traveled on to Tanzania, I realized I miss my family most in the hours before we actually say goodbye. The franticness of loading up the car and the anxiety of a last quick huddled prayer at the airport mask the heartache of separation in a weird way. But in those final sweet moments of togetherness, when the chai is still hot in the cup, the cards are still dealt for seven, and the conversation is quiet because all the new stories have been told and there is time leftover to just be, sadness scoots in too close, like an uninvited guests and watches over my shoulder. It takes in the scene, one detail at a time, and presses it against my heart. Tomorrow there will be tears and kisses and a bittersweet cacophony of goodbyes. But today, listening to laughter and the nonsense that comes with absolute peace, I feel my heart give just a little as it breaks under the weight of such joy.

Scratch

Last night in the shower I was hit with an unexpected bout of cultural vertigo. I had bent over under the shower head pounding out almost-too-hot water to scrub the city off of my feet when I noticed a thin scratch on the inside of my ankle. Nearly healed but still raised and pink, it was half-hidden under a swath of raspberry lather. I had forgotten all about the scratch but seeing it again caused a flurry of ripples on the still surface of my heart. I remembered exactly when I got it. About two weeks ago three women carrying heavy loads of firewood home had stopped to rest under a tree outside our fence. Our guard had taken a pitcher of water out to them and had come back with word that they wanted to see the khawaja baby. I had time to kill so I went outside with Annabelle and sat down on the long rough tree roots and watched them pass my daughter between them. We had the most normal conversation. How's your family? How are your kids? How many do you have? How far away is your house? Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the pleasant kind of talk that you can sometimes have with strangers. While we chatted goats grazed on the hill behind us and our guard plucked out wiry tunes on his robaba that hovered hesitantly in the still air. Five or six boys loped by like a pack of hunting dogs, shiny and clean from a bath in the gulley full of brown rain water. I rummaged around in my brain for misplaced Arabic words and they chatted to each other every once in a while in their shared mother tongue. When we ran out of things to say we just sat under the tree and looked at the baby. Eventually the sun was low enough on the horizon that the hungriest mosquitoes were braving their way out, so we rose to go our separate ways. But when I stood up I stepped back into one of the loads of firewood and gashed my ankle on a rough splinter. It didn't hurt that badly and I had forgotten all about it until last night. But standing on a tile floor in a bathroom cloudy with steam, it was weird to see that mark on my ankle and remember the day I got it. I was reminded of a day and a place that felt so very far away and yet amazingly, were as close as unhealed skin. There is a line in a Maya Angelou poem about someone waking from a dream of a walk by the sea and reaching down to find sand in their pockets. I felt like that last night. Like I had dreamed of another home and woken up with it's scars on my skin.

We're in Nairobi. Again. We were supposed to be here at this point anyway. We have a conference to attend in a few days. But we left North Africa a week early after news (rumors? stories? reports?) of more soldiers, more airplanes, more artillery, more threats reached a point that we felt like it was time to go, for now anyway. Our prayer is that things will be fine for us to go back in a week or so. After all, nothing has happened in our state as of yet. Of the three "contested areas" one has been razed to the ground and the other is being inundated with bombs. But our state hasn't been touched. Does this mean nothing will ever happen? Does this mean it's only a matter of time? Who knows. My biggest fear is that this wretched anticipation of nothingness will linger on for weeks and months leaving us in perpetual uncertainty.

I hate how far away that place feels when I am here. Missing there terribly and enjoying here thoroughly rub against each other like bare feet in too-small shoes leaving me feeling chaffed.

Hill

I’ve been moody this week. I was elated to be home again, so happy over nothing in particular that I was bound to feel sad over nothing in particular before too long (there is some twisted logic in there somewhere). The past couple of days I have been irritable for no good reason, giving things like swarms of flies or rotten fruit far more credit than they are due. I think a part of me hates to admit that political uncertainty could really stress me out subconsciously. I’d rather be absurdly annoyed at bugs and bananas then sensibly scared that bombs might start falling, however remote that possibility. (Though for the record nothing has happened or appears likely to happen anytime soon. We are perfectly safe.)    

It has finally started raining, which is something to be happy about. The heat crescendoed on Tuesday, smothering us with low white hot clouds before finally boiling itself into a dark mass and rolling over us like a blessed tidal wave. The thunder sounded like it was cracking the mountains wide open and the hail was like gunfire on our tin roof. The wind blew basins and barrels off of our back porch and the towels we shoved under our front door did little to hold back the flood of rain. Our tanks under the gutters were full in minutes then poured over into the muddy rivers cutting across the yard. What only hours earlier would have been a treasure to hoard greedily was suddenly nothing more than a swamp of muddy puddles to walk around in big rain boots. It’s amazing how quickly things can change.            

This week we have lots of little girls from the neighborhood stop by to visit Annabelle. I will be reading a book on the couch or clearing off the table after lunch and hear a noise outside that gets my attention. Three or four little faces and accompanying pairs of hands will be pressed through our loose bamboo fence curiously peering into our open door and windows. I usually ask them what they what they want though I already know. “Jena” they say. Baby. If Annabelle is awake I will take her outside to meet her fan club. It’s like she is some enchanted forest creature I have caught that everyone wants to see for themselves to make sure she is real. They touch her and can’t stop giggling at how white her skin is against theirs. But then again when I hand her off into a pair of strong little hands I realize that in other ways she is the most normal thing in the world to these girls. They gently bounce and jostle her like they do their own little sisters. They count her toes and pet the soft fuzz on her head. They make all sorts of silly faces to try and get her to smile. Every little girl loves babies. I am lucky these ones love mine.

Last night Abigail and I hiked the hill behind our house. I know our neighbors thought we must be out of our ever-loving minds to leave the baby with the man of the house and tromp up a vertical incline in long skirts just for the heck of it, but we really didn’t care. It just seemed like the thing to do in the moment. The climb up really isn’t so bad. There are a few places you have to use all four limbs to hoist yourself over a rock but it is mostly just a really steep ten minute walk. At the top we inspected the old fox holes dug during the war and pointed out landmarks in town. We stood still and tried to soak up the view but even though the hill isn’t that big, the sheer immensity of the landscape below is astounding from that height. This country just seems to stretch on forever in every direction. It was beautiful. We took a couple of pictures and then started back down. Now, I am not sure if I had just forgotten how incredibly difficult the hike back down actually is or if some mysterious force of erosion had made it significantly worse but we spent the following 45 minutes laughing hysterically and in genuine fear as we inched our way down the loose rocky slope on our rear-ends, trying not to flash the group of obnoxious little boys who had (understandably) gathered at the base of the hill to prepare for the impending tumble of the two crazy white women. I will spare you the details, but let’s just say we finally arrived home safely though covered in dirt and ash and with a few new bruises to share. However, we were also much happier than when we had left. In fact, I think the moral of the story is, in the face of life’s great stresses there really is nothing better than wetting your pants laughing while doing something stupid with your sister.     

Liminality

I thought Annabelle would be napping as I write this. She usually is at this time of the morning.  Her bed is in the tent where she is safe from the flies and the cool breeze blows through open mesh windows on three sides. But she is feeling social (read “stubborn”), preferring to lay on my lap and talk to me about the lizard she sees on the wall behind me or the boys on the hill outside she can hear calling to each other.

It is so good to be home. I’ve probably said this before but coming back here from Kenya always feels like waking up from a long dream about another world. It feels like stepping back into real life while the details of the dream world grow hazier with each passing moment of wakefulness. Of course, that’s what it feels like when I leave this place too. I am always passing from one world to the next. Both real and both dreams.

Things have felt incredibly normal since we have been back - just as they have always been in the past two years. The market still has the same vegetables in the same stalls run by the same people. There are still more goats and pigs on the road than cars. Water is still a huge problem for everyone. In fact one of the only things that seems to have changed a whole lot as far as our daily lives are concerned is Annabelle. People have been so excited to meet her. In five days close to a dozen people have stopped by to greet and bless her, pulling her out of my arms eagerly to bounce and pet while she just stares back with her baby owl eyes. She is quite the novelty, the only khawaja baby most people have ever seen. They laugh at how white her skin is against theirs and most seem to think she looks just like Bryan. When we took her to town a few days ago we were scolded for bringing her out in the heat and one lady sternly instructed me on how to properly hold a baby (“Don’t you know how to hold her correctly?”). But the cook at our favorite restaurant left for a neighboring shop in the middle of our meal and returned with a soft yellow blanket and two cotton bibs, his gift for the “new person”. And at our favorite tea shop a man nearby bought our drinks and the tea lady herself rocked Annabelle and said, “This is our baby. All of ours.” I have a blessed child.

But the liminality of my life, the inbetweeness and not-yet-but-maybeness, lingers on. Our next door neighbors informed us last night that all the personnel in their organization are “temporarily relocating” (“evacuation” is a four letter word around here) for an unknown period of time. With them goes some good friends, a source of political info and rumors, a connection with kindred spirits and, quite possibly, our internet connection. It’s a bit early yet to know what this means for us. We are talking, listening, praying and preparing. Life couldn’t seem more normal and yet all that could change in a heartbeat. It’s weird to think of how different my life could look in the course of just a week. When we crawled in bed last night Bryan asked me how I was feeling and I found it hard to separate one emotion from another. There were spatterings of fear and hope, excitement and uncertainty. But maybe the biggest one was disappointment. Or the fear of disappointment rather. I don’t want to be foolish and I don’t want to be in danger or put those I love in danger. But I really, really don’t want to leave either.

I got up early and went for a run this morning. I am not a morning runner. I never have been. We’ll see whether or not I turn out to be one. It usually makes me puke up my empty early-morning stomach. But an early-morning baby and the gift she has left around my mid-section has inspired me to a change of nature, so I left her cooing in bed with her Papa this morning and set off on the trail that runs along the base of the mountain. It was so cool, almost chilly. Wet clouds stuck to the tops of the hills like damp cotton, torturously close to the parched earth but like every other morning this week, offering nothing more than a cruel sprinkle. I only passed a few huts on the trail and saw very few people. A little boy with sleepy eyes waved as I passed his house and a woman in the distance carried buckets to someplace that still has water. I heard someone in the distance chopping firewood for a breakfast fire but could never see them. While I ran I thought about how much I would miss this running trail. How much I would miss my house and my tent, my neighbors and my hill. It would be so unbelievably disappointing. But I realized as I ran, that I don’t really have a right to that word. But I was running past the houses of people who probably do. Disappointing is not having a satellite phone to call in a plane to get you out of trouble. Disappointing is not having a vehicle (of sorts) to drive out of town in if trouble comes to you. Disappointing is not having another home somewhere safer than this that you can always return to and a dark blue passport to get you there. Disappointing is not being safe because of either the color of your skin or the language you speak or the political party you belong to. That’s disappointing.  

I didn’t lose my cookies on the trail this morning so maybe I’ll keep up the new habit. It still hasn’t rained though. The world is still cold and dry and expectant, waiting for something to change.