We went to an old church for a Latin Mass, and it was hot and quiet...I watched a young woman, heavily pregnant, care for her young daughter. She looked tired, and a bit depressed. I remember the last days of a summer pregnancy, when I looked like a merchant ship heading for harbor, and I was more tired than I'd ever been. I felt again, as I often have, that women bear a heavy burden in marriage; some part of our own life is given in each pregnancy, in a much more obvious and visceral way. I think men should feel the last days of pregnancy--just for a day. But their psyches, not made to suffer this, might just implode. I bet an old man plagued with gout might feel something the same as a woman in the last days of pregnancy.
We then decided the kids really needed to see Sydney Harbour, so we went downtown. The heat makes it harder to enjoy a city for sure, but we made our way down to the Harbour area and splurged for a little lunch along the water, looking out at the massive Harbour Bridge. I saw names I remembered from Australian history: Macquarie, Esq--one of the first Governors of Australia had his name all over downtown streets, parks and buildings. I remember reading that he had a penchant for naming things after himself, and even Mrs. Macquarie Park or Blvd showed up in our ramblings. As I remember, Macquarie was a pious, moral Scot who attempted, in the mid-1800s, to bring New South Wales out of what he saw was a moral morass. He was more humane to the Aboringinal people than those who came before him; he was a family man who worked diligently to improve the world around him, and an ambitious man who never, in life, received what he thought was his due. He was one of many diligent soldier-administrators from the United Kingdom who served tireliessly in India, in Australia, and died without receiving much honor from the home country.
As I looked at the statue of Major Macquarie, I wondered at the tenacity of someone who would make the long ship-voyage here when it was so primitive, to try and improve it. What would drive that? How would one have the energy, the courage? Pure ambition? Religious fervor? Or the ideal of service and administration of the world that seemed the British mission in those centuries, kind of cultural empire fervor (for good and ill)? For what end? Victoria? Her statue stood across the street, in front of the great park gates, near Sydney cathedral. As an American, I find what I see as near-worship of a monarch to be foreign. I don't have the feel; I am in that way, a thoroughly modern person.
The kids were fascinated with the Opera House. Up close, with the sea air wafting and the pleasant rumble of boat engines, the impression of huge, white sails is much more real; in other words, the design makes sense in the visceral experience of the harbour. The favorite scene for all of us, though, was the Royal Botanical Gardens, full of strange, large figs and what I think of as Baobabs. These trees remind me of The Little Prince, a book I had a bad introduction to: When read for the first time in a Westmont College French class, it seemed like a mushroom trip. Perhaps my French was just really bad. Poinsettias, dahlias, orchids, Chinese evergreens, strange conifers, and beautiful plants with bright purple leaves all grow here in the Botanical Gardens equally well. The park looks down over the harbor, full and busy with sails slicing the air, and ferries chugging across to Manly Spit. We laid under a tree, trying to rest from the heat. On the way back, we stopped to look at a wedding party gathered around big, giant letters forming "AMERICA" standing in front of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which featured an exhibit of American painters. We forgot where we were for a second, and then realized we weren't in America.
Shell Beach was our next stop, in a very wealthy area of Sydney; we walked down a stone easement, well-used and delightfully peppered with the peach-golden sand. Huge, beautiful mansions look over a quiet, golden and blue beach. Young and golden people sat on the sand with food-call numbers from the Yacht Club; they held wine glasses lightly, easily, their WASPish look strangely juxtaposed with the look of tribal dancers given by the whiteness of sunscreen smeared all over their faces. We swam for a bit and then tried to get home, but I got lost, because the gps is working in km and meters, and I get very mixed up when I'm told to do something in 50 meters. I was cussing in an Australian accent at Luckis. The spatial sense takes awhile, and so many things are simply backwards from what I'm used to; I still feel like my eyes are crossed sometimes.
Tomorrow back to Dimmey's for more cheap home goods, I guess. It is fun--and a little firghtening--to have a store clerk ask, "Do you need another trolley?" Thaddeus has his first meeting as Dean tomorrow.
I'm going to go to bed early. It has been one of the most full weeks in my entire 45 years--being the parent on an international move is one hefty job. Before, it was always my parents doing the nitty gritties; I wonder now how they did it all and in different languages. I wonder how they got through the first week in Afghanistan, with no running water, no telephones, no car, and no money. And my mother was pregnant with my older sister. It makes me see them in a different light, makes me proud of them...like Macquarie, what made them do it? Perhaps some people really do live by service and they think the hardship worth it. Most of the time, I'm too cynical to really believe in that, but my parents have always seemed more good, more innocent, more honorable than anyone else. I know enough now of life, of family, to know what a blessing that has been: to honor your parents, parents who, although nowhere near perfect, have made it easy for you to honor them.
As I morph back into the present from 1966 Kabul, from that image of my twenty-four year old pregnant mother in a burquah at the Kabul airport, I think, "What am I doing here?" A vacation for three years? Just the adventure? No. That would not be enough. The service for a Christian institution is one thing that can keep you going; the hope of seeing Christ in the eyes of a young person is the only thing deep enough for the uprooting to be worth it. I hope we can be means for that to happen here, and I hope we don't screw it up.
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