I could barely walk this morning. But this is one of the happiest places in the world to me, and I am recuperating.
March 30, 2008
There are so many kinds of losing. It seems that grief takes many forms.
There is a wild pain that wakes you up in the night gasping for breath, a panic that makes your heart skip a beat. There are dreams that leave you weeping into your pillow. There can be screaming, anger and striking and tearing. It is the grief for the untimely, for ones who shouldn't have left the earth so quickly. I've never felt this kind of grief, but I've seen it and I've cried along with those who wake up in those nights with the darkness sitting heavy on them.
There is grief that has you lying in your bed, curled in a ball. Your tears leak into your pillow, you don't want to eat. Food seems pointless. You don't know what to do with the days that stretch on ahead, but you know that you need to be brave, sometime, somewhere. Soon. But now you will just curl up into yourself and cry into the softness. You miss your dear brother, or your husband. You weren't ready to let him go. I haven't been there, either.
And then there is grief that takes you gently. It is the longing for someone who will never be there again, but who led a long and full life, who had many days, many memories. It is a sharp pang when you look in the mirror and see your curly, curly hair- the hair that didn't come from nowhere, the annoying ringlets that you inherited. It is when you remember your special nickname, the one that your grandma used for you; "Pet Lamb." It is when you think, "Oh please can she come back? Just so I can hug her and smell her one more time? So I can hear her singing while she washed the dishes? So I can write down her stories?"
It is when you stop in your tracks on the way to walking somewhere, stop dead midway, stand staring off. You wait for your heart to feel okay again and then keep going the way you were, toward your kids who are waiting for you. This is the kind that is mine.
April
April 2, 2008
We're still on our journey north to Canada, taking it very, very slowly. I'm feeling wandery and content to look out of the van window. Chinua and I are having a good time, giving each other loving looks in the car, and the kids are amazing, as usual. I love my kids.
My eyes fill with tears at the oddest of times.
Will we reach Canada tonight? Tomorrow? Right now we don't even know. Today I had the incredible chance to visit with a friend and her hours-old baby. There is nothing like the smell of the newest of children.
April 3, 2008
In Portland we call some friends (one good thing about the diaspora of our community is that we have friend in many cities) and drop in. We meet at the park. The kids have glowing halos around their heads as they play on the swings. We ooh and aah over how much their kids have grown. They ooh and aah over ours. It is chilly in the shade so we shift around to get into the sun-- our eyes are happy to see each other.
We decide to stay for the night. Dusk is close, it is the golden hour and Chinua's camera shutter is never still. Our friend bicycles away toward his house and we follow him in the van.
Food and wine happen, we talk and lounge on the floor. I'm not feeling so great so I ask if I may take a bath. My friend pours one for me and when I go into the bathroom, there are candles lit and bamboo towels on the rack.
Time has passed, but not much time has passed. Our kids speak in full sentences, they are a little taller, but our hearts are the same.
April 22, 2008
Pregnancy update: I've reached the point in this whole pregnancy schtick where I have two companions who make themselves known at many moments during the day.
The first is, of course, my little baby. Tap tap tap, he/she says. Tap tap wriggle. It's code for I love you.
The second is heartburn. And it burns burns burns, the ring of fire. It's code for you are going to regret eating anything at all. Ever.
April 24, 2008
I have no idea what our next house will look like. Maybe it will be tall and leaning, with curved staircases, like a house from a Dr. Seuss book. Probably not.
Maybe it will be round and chubby, with thick earth walls and a hole in the ceiling. Probably not.
Brick? Cement? Stucco? Wood? Tinfoil?
I'm hoping for a garden. I still miss the earthiness of the Land, the blanketing screen of the trees with the sun coming through the leaves. I want to sit in the dirt and smell flowers all around me. The herb smell of warm weeds. The metallic smell of the sun.
I'm hoping for doors and windows that I can throw open.
I guess we'll see.
May
May 2, 2008
We have about four more days to get ready to fly away.
FOUR DAYS.
FOUR. DAYS. Until I move with my family to India.
What do you think the chances are that I can have Leafy fully potty-trained by then?
No, I thought so too. Bummer.
We fly to Turkey, and then Israel, and then from Jordan to India. Because moving with your family is not enough when you are six months pregnant and everyone is still five and under. We have to throw a little backpacking and rustic camping in the hills of Turkey in there too.
But the truth is that I'm looking forward to this more than almost anything in years and years. And then at night before I drop off to sleep I start thinking about moving away from EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE.
And then I ask Chinua to hit me over the head and knock me out.
May 3, 2008
You do things a different way. You find new things that comfort you.
A cup of tea in the perfect spot by the window. The notebooks from the stationary store down the street. Breakfast at that one restaurant with the really good lemon pancakes. You find new ways to breathe, different clothes to wear, new ways to look at people on the street.
You can change. You can see things with eyes that have not seen this before. The sun sets in the sky oddly. Slowly it becomes a familiar orb, foreign no longer.
You find the perfect market stall, the one with the piles of glowing fruit and the man with the superlative kindness. You make friends with his wife. You find new ways of cooking things. These are the things that I know to be true about traveling, about moving to new places.
*
It is 3:00 in the morning and I can't sleep. It probably isn't surprising, but what is surprising is that I haven't been all that nervous before now. It began with the packing. I have pared our things down to the very basic, the most special, the smallest things, and yet, as I pack, I see how much we will have to leave behind. We will give more things away, and the most special will be waiting for us, one day, in a box that we will open and exclaim over. But they are only things.
I remember my sense of loss when I moved to California from British Columbia. It took me years, and I went through the loops, around and around the culture shock trails, before I came to where I am today. How amazing, that we can have more than one home.
It is the parenting parts that have empty spaces. I'm not sure exactly how this works, how we adjust together to the new tastes in our mouths. But in a way, it is like every part of parenting; there are always gaps, you are always figuring it out as you go, it is always a different child's month for testing you in ways that make you reach for the farthest bits of strength because you need to be stronger than the days ahead.
*
You find the paths that everyone loves, the new birds and flowers. You play in the waves. You find new soap, new types of clothing. You color together on paper that feels different than the paper at home. You watch excitedly through the window of the train, counting camels, sheep with long tails, elephants.
You listen to each other, you kiss and hug relentlessly, you write and you draw and you tell stories while everyone is drifting off to sleep under a different night.
May 6, 2008
Today we finished packing up all of our backpacks, taking things to the thrift store, and returning electronics that we needed to return. Then we drove for a
few hours to Seattle, leaving Canada and all the new growth on the poplars behind.
Goodbyes are the hardest part. My parents have been so incredible during this time that we have been staying with them, and it's so hard to go farther away. Thankfully technology has reached a point where we can be in touch like never before. But still it's hard.
I'm sitting in a hotel room right now, a really swanky one that we practically stole online, in a bit of a daze, wondering how many new things I am on the cusp of. I feel as though we have reached the top of a really long hill, are just about to pull up over the crest to where we can see the other side. We're not there yet, and as I sit here in a strange city in a strange hotel room, I am wondering what exactly it is that I am on the other side of.
Tomorrow our first adventure begins. We are flying to Istanbul, Turkey, ready to join a bunch of brothers and sisters from all around the world on a camping adventure. The theme of the gathering is Peace in the Middle East.
Tomorrow we crest that hill, and perhaps our legs will run away with us as we head down the other side. All I know is that I hope I'm not going to be doing a whole lot of actual carrying of my backpack, or I will be literally rolling down that hill.
EPILOGUE
And… right here, just before the plane journey that will change all of our lives forever, I'll stop. But of course our story doesn't end here.
Our family did reach India and of course it wasn't anything like we imagined it would be. (Nothing ever is.) The move was both harder and better than we could have imagined.
If you are interested in seeing photos from this time in our life, you can check out the small gallery I've created which includes photos of the Land, the kids, and the house after the trees fell on it— http://racheldevenishford.squarespace.com/trees-tall-as-mountains/
To Chinua, who makes space for me to write, to my mom and dad, who are simply full of love and care, to Candace, Elena, and Renee, for being perfect partners in crime, to Julie who taught me how to knit, to Amelia, who taught me how to make fudge, to Jessie and Levi, who took me to Burkina Faso, and to the people who worked so long to make the Land such an amazing place to live. Thank you.
Bio
Rachel Devenish Ford is the wife of one Superstar Husband and the mother of five incredible children. Originally from British Columbia, Canada, she spent seven years working with street youth in California before moving to India to help start a meditation center in the Christian tradition. She can be found eating street food or smelling flowers in many cities in Asia. She currently lives in Northern Thailand, inhaling books, morning air, and seasonal fruit.
Other works by Rachel Devenish Ford:
The Eve Tree
Oceans Bright With Stars: The Journey Mama Writings- Book Two
A Home as Wide as the Earth: The Journey Mama Writings: Book Three
A Traveler's Guide to Belonging (Read on for an excerpt)
World Whisperer
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Thanks so much for reading.
If you enjoy YA fantasy, you will love World Whisperer, Rachel Devenish Ford's new adventurous, coming-of-age book for teens and adults.
Seven years ago, Isika's mother walked out of the desert with three children in tow, leading the priest of the Worker village to marry her and take in her children. In all those years, fourteen-year-old Isika has never been able to fit in as a Worker or live up to her role as the priest's daughter, and worse, she has been helpless against the tragedies that have fallen on her family.
But now the four goddesses they serve want another sacrifice, and Isika's stepfather has chosen the next child to be sent out to sea: the little brother who Isika loves more than anything.
This time Isika will not be powerless.
Together, she and her two remaining siblings leave the walls of the Worker village to save their brother, traveling into unknown lands and magic they never could have imagined.
***
If you like Rachel's journals, you might enjoy her fiction, including The Eve Tree and A Traveler's Guide to Belonging.
Praise for The Eve Tree:
"If you like Barbara Kingsolver's books, you'll LOVE The Eve Tree. A beautiful and haunting tale about generations connected by livelihood and place, Ford evokes the great books by Kingsolver and Steinbeck. Lush prose, conflicted characters so vividly drawn you would recognize them passing them on the street."~Melissa Westemeier, Ecowomen.net
"Rachel's characters have been so real to me this week that I found myself worrying for them, while I was away from the book, as I would for family members."~Blackbird in Tuvalu
"It is a masterfully told story, unfolding slowly, layer by layer, working down to the rawest and deepest parts and drawing the reader in almost imperceptibly until they are caught, surprised by how much they care." ~Carrien Blue from She Laughs at the Days
"This is a book to read slowly, to savour. I can open it up to almost any random page and find a description so well crafted that it is quote-worthy." ~Five Minutes for Books
Molly Boscelli is a woman in her forties, a somewhat unstable goat farmer who reluctantly inherited
her Northern California ranch ten years ago. Now she is facing a crisis in an approaching forest fire, an threat that shocks Molly with the truth of her strong love for her land, her trees, and her animals.
Molly's husband, Jack, is confronted by his own past as he fights his fear for Molly's mental wellness and watches her as she is pushed to her limit. Catherine, Molly's mother, returns to the ranch she passed on to her daughter, and prepares to give Molly a gift that has nothing to do with goats or trees and everything to do with acceptance. As the whole family gathers to prepare for the fire together, they dig deeply into layers of history and grief to find the wholeness and strength they need to claim the earth they stand on.
The Eve Tree is a haunting, lyrical novel about the moments that form a family and a place, and the life-sustaining discovery of love, even in the midst of fire.
Or you might enjoy Rachel Devenish Ford's new novel, A Traveler's Guide to Belonging.
"A beautiful, beautiful book." -Sara J. Henry, Award-winning author of Learning to Swim
Twenty-four-year-old Timothy is far from his home country of Canada when his new wife dies in childbirth. Stunned, he finds himself alone with his newborn son in the mountains of North India and no idea of what it means to be a father. He begins a journey through India with his baby, seeking understanding for loss and life and the way the two intertwine.
Set among the stunning landscapes, train tracks, and winding alleys of India, A Traveler's Guide to Belonging is a story about fathers and sons, losing and finding love, and a traveler's quest for meaning.
A TRAVELER'S GUIDE TO BELONGING
PART 1
CHAPTER 1
Later, Isabel's mother would say that her daughter died like a pig on the floor, but Timothy had been there, and he knew that Isabel's death was nothing like the noisy, terrible death of a pig. It happened like this: Isabel was there and then she was gone, gone into the deep black Indian night, gone away from him and her newborn son, gone forever.
The day had started like all
of their days since they had moved to the foothills of the Himalaya mountains in the far north of India four months before. Timothy and Isabel lived in a tiny, sun-soaked house surrounded by corn fields. When they had first seen the house, there had been wheat rather than corn, the tall stalks rippling gently as they walked up the curving paths from house to house, climbing stairs on the hillside where there were no roads, until Isabel put one hand on her belly, round with their baby, and declared she had to sit down or she would fall down. Timothy found a chair for her at a small café, then, at her bidding, had walked across the path to check out the little white house. The house turned out to be perfect, the very house where they would live and wait for their baby. They moved in and the wheat grew tall, then was harvested by women wearing punjabi suits with sweater vests, shawls wrapped around their heads. Corn was planted, and it grew, until that day when Timothy and Isabel woke up, not knowing they would be saying goodbye to each other forever.
Trees Tall as Mountains (The Journey Mama Writings: Book 1) Page 30