My parents are here, and so my nuclear family is once together; this doesn't happen very often anymore, with one of us in Manhatten, one in Sydney, and two on a small island off the coast of Washington.
For the first time in many years, too, we have had some time alone as a nuclear family: the kids are in school, Thaddeus at the office, and so the Wryes have been exploring and enjoying each other...it reminds me of the four of us in the Opel traveling across Europe to the UK for a wedding, or to Neos Marmaras for our summer hols.
We talk about things now, as all adults; for the first time in many, many years, since 1996, really, we can really talk, because the kids are in school. The kids are wonderful of course, but it is nice to just be with those who share the most memories with you. We can talk freely about our adventures but now, with hindsight, and age, there is a reckoning with regrets. My parents will now say that "We should have stayed in Greece" and I say, "But we couldn't." There are painful events there that makes clear God's providence even when you can't see it at the time. My sister and I and my parents. We grieve over Afghanistan and our memories of sweet tea, blue skies and Miralee. I nearly cry each time I think of him--he was probably just a few years older than I am now, then, and he looked about seventy. He was a country man who took care of us..and he really took care of us; more than that, he loved us. He watched me like a shepherd watching over the littlest lamb and took me to school, through the dusty streets of Kabul, me sitting on the handlebars of his ancient bike, his arms around me. He spoke Farsi to me; I only have a memory of speaking to him and hearing him, but I have no memory of the Farsi, except "Imjabeeb, Tamim." He told me when we left, "You come back to see me" and I said, "I will, Miralee." I never did, because Afghanistan was never safe again, and Miralee is most likely dead now. I can cry about Miralee with my nuclear family, because they loved him too. I remember telling Miralee about Christ, wanting him to know about a God who loved him; I look back on that and wonder what he thought of a five-year-old instructing him about God's love, he a man who loved simply and without guile.
Though we have so much struggle and adventure common, we've all traveled such different roads: I am a Roman Catholic, my parents are Evangelicals, and my sister has a deep faith but not attached to any certain church. We see politics so differently; there are deep crevasses of belief and understanding that we have had to choose to cross--or not.
I believe love always chooses to cross, as I have watched both my parents do, and my sister...forgiveness, tolerance of the good kind, love; the difficulty for all of us has been how to do this without compromising one's understanding of the truth. Perhaps it is the Third Culture existence we four have lived for so many years, that stretching of the mind and heart that allows us to cross, to risk our comfort zones, and to deepen our sense of the truth by trying to understand each other. This is what I wanted my children to gain by living in another country: this stretching towards the Other, not a receding in fear.
We can certainly stretch here: We are surrounded, in Parramatta (city just west of Sydney proper) by Asian people, Indian, Arabic...at the Parramatta cathedral the other day, five people were lined up for communion: a black man, Indian woman, Arabic man, white man, and the person giving out communion was Asian. In our neighborhood, a South African 'colored' couple live across from us (Beryl, who has been in Australia for thirty years: "We had our reasons for leaving" was all she would say); an Indian family who have a lovely grandmother who waits for her grown children to come in the driveway; Jeff, an Australian draftsman who is divorced; Tracy's family, who are in and out; and Abe, who says "I am not religious but there is some special Presence in your chapel over there at the college" and "I sometimes can see a kind of aura around people who are very good." I desperately wanted to ask, "Do you see one around me?" but didn't dare--the truth might hurt.
Food has been multi-cultural, too: My sister took us all out to an Indian restaurant; we ate lovely dishes of chicken and lamb and laughed at the Bollywood movie on in the corner. We talked about the New Delhi trip in 1968; I began my existence there, and my sister almost ended hers there by nearly falling off a balcony. I thought of my parents, young and clueless and in southeast Asia. How did we all survive? My sister said later, "Well, I look back on all that--and I think 'I did survive. I survived."
Outside the Passage to India here in Blacktown, there were Sikhs in shorts--great name for a band: Sikhs in Shorts.
I know there is great good in homogeneity; a culture has its history and deep connections, like siblings in a family. In Lander, we experienced a sense of American rooted-ness and we knew Lander before the new Safeway and before Old Town Coffee was in existence; we saw six classes of students come through the WCC doors. We had deep loves of places and friends and people knew us; there was "oh what year was the choir singing that" and a love-hate relationship with McDonald's in the sunset, marring the mountain view, and I always thought of Clarissa bemoaning the fact that on Resurrection Day she didn't want to come out of her grave on Boot Hill above Holy Rosary and see---McDonald's.
Now McDonald's is "Macca's" and Hungry Jack's is our love-hate relationship with fast food...Woolworth's has become 'the store' and I've got my little labyrinth ways up to school. I always break the rules at a certain roundabout...I'm still an American who needs to bust through the rules, especially if they don't make any sense. That's why we have a military base in the middle of the Australian outback. No, Thaddeus has not said a word. But I am wondering if this is good? Or not? I'm slowly taking a survey here on that one. I guess a 747 flies in and out of there every day. Weirdness.
But anyway, do you leave all those roots? Is it Right? I am an adventurer at heart, like my Dad, but as I age, I see the real value of roots. I feel the heartbreak of not seeing beloved friends now. And I wonder, "Is it right to do that to them, too?" It isn't just my own heartbreak. I think that heaven must have both adventure and a deep, eternal, abiding, daily knowing of others. That doesn't really happen in this life; it is full of regrets and goodbyes. It is a race and friends are those who give us cups of water along the way, as we do for them, and we hope to see them in the Garden someday: "I will meet you there."
So we're both stretching and trying to feel at home. The name for our house surfaced: Peach Pit House. You'll have to come and you'll see why. The kids are starting to say "What marks did you get?" and "I've an assessment next week" and "Maths homework is due." They are learning that Australians do not want to say they are good at anything, or out of the ordinary, for fear of appearing to be putting themselves forward..."The Tall Poppy Syndrome" is what it is called...and you can see it a little even in traffic patterns. Australians will stay in their lane patiently even when there's a long line; the rare person will try and get round the line by sneaking in (usually me).
Again, though, I know my real roots lie in a land not accessible by transport of any kind. Adventure can bring that home in a new way. Living in another culture heightens a feeling that is always present, for all people: a sense of searching, longing, for home, the restless heart of St. Augustine.
We all did get down to Curl Curl, my new favorite beach, where my loving cousin took us all the other day. We went back on the weekend. There are points on each end, and Australians have particular places on this beach with which they identify: "North End" or "South Curl Curl." The water is myriad colors of green and blue, and there's a sea pool built into the rocks on the south end; it is filled by the changing tides, and the Curl Curl Swim Club was having races in the pool. There's also a nice little cafe, not too expensive (tea for $4 and flat whites (latte) for about 3 or 4). The walls are orange, tiled floors, beach towels made into pillows on the bench along the wall; colorful water glasses and people in their suits and sandy feet relaxing out of the sun. The lifeguard station is just next door and the lifeguards were driving round in a kind of 'ute' (truck) gathering signs and moving them.
I also got back down to Sydney a couple times--ML and I had tea at the Queen Victoria Building, in the High Tea Room; each tea set was a different version of Royal Albert china and we sat in plush chairs and talked. I also met Delaine from Lander at the Circular Quay and had lunch...lovely and strange to be with someone from home.
We're going to try and do a Wrye Tea before ML leaves: we've done tea together at The Ritz in London, The Plaza in New York, The Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, some kind of sort of tea in Prague. "What was that?" Some of us have done Fortnam and Mason in London, The Metropol in Moscow, Hotel Astoria in St. Petersburg...so we're excited about the Sydney one.
And there's a family wedding coming up: Hannah Thornton is marrying Jakin Mai in two weeks. We're all to go out for the weekend to a retreat center. I was thinking that it was strange that in two weeks, the majority of my grandparents' descendants will be in Australia. What do you think of that, Grandma?
"Who cares? I'd rather you were all Home in heaven."
"Oh. Just don't make me eat that turkey giblet gravy, or I won't come."
"Oh, for the Love of Pete's Sake, Holy Cow, Fiddlesticks."
Weddings, feasts, and fellowship with families are sometimes like a taste of something beyond earthly existence; so is the beauty one sees at Curl Curl: the sky meeting the water is the place where eternity begins, like a door in the world, but we can't get there except through struggle, through the race, through being stretched beyond our limits. My grandmother had a cheap poster, cheap but framed in a gilded frame, cheap but magical. Pictured was a banquet table, an impossibly long table in a sunset, set with beautiful china and candlelabras, in a dimming light wherein it is just time to light the candles. I used to stare at that picture for a long time, wondering. I finally realized at about six, on one of our Stateside visits, that it was a place waiting for me, waiting for all of us, a feast for the King. I wondered if I would be dressed right. I want to sit next to my grandmothers and have us all be young women. I want to ask Miralee for forgiveness that I made a promise I did not keep, and to tell him how many times I have thought of him and been grateful for his gentle heart that made me feel at home in the mountains of Afghanistan; I want to spend time with Mrs. Fagerson and Rusty and Mary Dean and Clarissa and all those I've been inspired by and loved; I want to embrace those I've hurt, and who have hurt me, for the wounds to finally make sense, to be wounds like those of the saints, redeemed wounds that have made me love better.
The set table seemed to be waiting for laughter, and food, and wine, and light. It was all ready but for the guests.
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