As You Go

It rained last night
unseasonal, but perfectly suited
a quiet, constant drizzle
like a mourning

A mourning last night
expected, but patently difficult
a grey grief misting
like a rain

And I may worry as you go
so many little things
when trying to feel
at home

So many big things
rising in a heart
very far from
what it knows

But I don't worry
about you
who you are or
who you will become

You live well
and shine
soft, clear
strong

We send you
in amazement
in confidence
and with tears

A joy last night
sure, if understandably muted
a calm, constant knowing
like all that is good

-lisa, 20 August, 2012

Quietly to Bed Now

So Jesse and Trevor are both gone now and we're back to 4 at our house.

It's funny because it hits me the most when I'm setting the table. Only 4 plates? How weird. And how odd was it to make tea in the medium sized blue pot this afternoon? I've been reaching for the GIANT Mother of All Brown Betty's all summer.

So I set the blue pot on the tea tray and I called down the hall to Heather, "Hey, we're eating chocolate today!" She came quickly :-) At least Heath and I know what to do in the face of this melancholy mood.

We sat on the porch and broke open our last bar of Trader Joe's fair trade milk chocolate (God bless Dana forever!) and sighed into our cups.

Tonight in the weird quiet of our home, I am thankful for so much.

I'm thankful for a full summer of unbelievable adventures. I'm thankful for many, many long conversations about all manner of things and life shared as a family. I'm thankful for the relationships the kids have and the way they speak into each other's lives. Some times we'll yell into each other's lives, but that's just they way we are. I'm thankful for the laughter and the dancing and the way we work together.

One of my very favorite things is to fall asleep hearing the boys still talking in the dark of their room. It feels like a sacred time as the 3 brothers discuss and share and wonder and plan. I can't hear the conversation--just the sound of their voices drifting softly down the hall.

I was just wondering how Colin was feeling about going to bed in there alone tonight. But I don't need to wonder any longer. He's just appeared and climbed in across the foot of my bed.

I don't blame him one bit!

Breaking Up the Babies

Trevor hopped on the shuttle for Nairobi about an hour ago. He'll catch the plane from there late tonight, have a monster layover in London and land in the States on Tuesday afternoon local time, early Wednesday morning his body's time. Jesse will leave here Wednesday night and get back to LA on Thursday.


I had to quickly catch a couple photos of the bambinos all together before Trev took off. (Silly butts.)


Yesterday evening, he took Heather on a little motorcycle ride date. They pulled back in all windblown and happy. Lucky little girl.

( Jesse took the photo of Trev and Heath, which is why the lighting is better. I need to learn my camera.)

Earlier today Byron asked, "Why do I feel like I'm about to be kicked in the stomach?

I said, "For the same reason I feel like I'm about to vomit."

This is the un-fun.

Busy Being Happy

It's been quiet on the blog because I've been too busy to write...

Busy running back and forth to the shuttle drop-off, collecting various vagabond family members (and their friends.)

Busy hugging and smiling.

Busy trying to remember how to cook proportions that meet college-boys eating habits.

Busy keeping up with the dishes.

Busy making more pots of tea to accompany more conversations.

Did I mention busy smiling?

Now I'm tired, tired, tired. Not from all those good things to be busy with. No, I"m tired because it's 11pm and I've been peeling and slicing bananas for the last 90 mins with my husband who has gone completely round the bend with drying fruit. This fun little domestic project has turned him into a madman.

Never mind.

A Building Buzz

There's such a buzz in our family right now. I've been in England for a few days--a quick dash in and out for the 24-7 leadership meetings. Byron is in California for board meetings. Trevor is in Colorado with Darrelle's family. Jesse is in Belize. Colin and Heather are in Arusha with the Russell family.

But little emails keep flying around between us all.

"Can't wait to get home!"

"I'll be with you soon!"

"Hard to believe we'll be there in a few days..."

"Almost there!"

Everyone is on the move now toward home where Colin and Heather await in Tanzania. I'm most of the way there, having just landed in Nairobi and settled into the guest house for the night. Byron flies out of LA tomorrow morning and he'll meet Trevor in DC that afternoon. They will fly on together, arriving a couple of days after me. Jesse leaves Belize shortly after that and gets to us on 21st.

I think we're all getting a little wigged out with excitement.

So, if you're in transit somewhere, you might spot various Borden family members doing little jigs in airports around the world :-)

"...Not an anchor but a mast."

"Home" is a fairly loose term in our family and for good reason, I suppose. By my calculation, Jesse, our eldest, has lived in 11 different houses. That's just a little more than 1 house for every 2 years of his life.

It's not an outrageous number, really. I know people who have lived in many more in fewer years. So that score of 11 is just a figure that plots this family on some graph for global nomads.

******

"Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast."

I read this today in Kahill Gibran's little book, The Prophet, and it did something for me. We have not been able to provide for our children an anchor in a certain community. I suppose we weren't really looking to do that, after all, but whatever we were looking to do, we have not rooted them in a geographical location. There is not a spot on the map that reels them in and says, "This is where you are moored."

I'm not saying that they lack places to love that hold for them a collection of memories, speaking to them of who they are. The streams in Loita remember their bare and sun-browned bodies, I am sure. Those hills are imprinted with their growing foot prints. And then there is Portugal's Atlantic coast. The cliffs launched them off into the cold water far below and must retain the echo of their yells and laughter. They slept in the dunes and grew tall in the salty air there.

For all our wandering, I am hoping that our home is, somehow, a strong mast. May each of our 4 find it a true and trustworthy place from which to raise their sails.

Quiet Around Here...

It's been quiet on this blog as our last few days have been a crush of activity and a swirl of emotion getting Jesse off on Saturday afternoon. For those who are interested, his flight route was Kilimanjaro-Kigali (Rwanda)-Addis (Ethiopia)-Rome-Washington D.C.-Los Angeles. Goodness! Now he has a few days in California before heading to Belize, Central America, to begin a semester-long course in Creation Care. He's very happy that he'll be studying in the rainforest.

For us, it's a bit of a shock to the system to be just the 4 of us again. We all grieve the departure of the 2 older brothers in slightly different ways, from being grumpy to getting quiet to feeling teary. We also trade off which one we're using as our coping technique! "I'll be grumpy today; you be teary." Ha ha.

I remember years ago, when Jesse and Trevor were quite small, dropping my parents off at the airport in Nairobi to send them back to L.A. I was overcome with sadness at their departure. But then a wee little light went on. Maybe, instead of focusing on how sad it was that they had to return home, I could think about how wonderful it was that they were able to come out and see us at all!

It's a good idea... (But it doesn't always work.)

Trevor, Off and Away (or My Prayers go Walkabout)

Trevor left for California today. He retraces his flightpath from Kilimanjaro to Nairobi to Rome to Washington D.C. to L.A. Bless him. It was amazing to have him here. You already know how much we don't like seeing him go. That's well documented in the posts tagged "Off to College." He goes to a good place full of good people for good reason... So, despite the sadness, we rejoice!

News from Kenya continues to shock and sadden us with at least 350 people killed during the violence. My prayers are all over the place--praying for peace in my old home, safety for dear friends, healing for other friends fighting heavy battles against cancer. And all these "serious" prayers are interspersed with little personal requests like, "Could you keep Trevor's guitar safe on the trip home?"

The Lord must wonder at me. I don't pray in priority order or by degree of seriousness. I pray as an on-going stream of consciousness conversation with someone I believe hears me.

Boys Home (Posted With Photos for Darrelle)

The boys are here, blinking in the bright African sun :-)

Trevor sobbed and sobbed when he got his arms around his Daddy.

Mmmmmmm.... feels good to have them home.

The Dreaded Joy

Jesse and Trevor will arrive here in Arusha on Monday night, December 17th. It's just over one week away!

They fly LA-Washington D.C.-Addis Ababa (Ethiopia, where they have to spend the night. ) Next morning they fly to Nairobi and THEN they take a 5 hour bus ride down to our town.

We are eager, excited, crazed little family members, waiting to throw our arms around them and kiss them to pieces.

But inside, I almost fear their return. I just don't like that their arrival is followed shortly by their departure.

My throat thickens in that awful way and my chest feels heavy at the thought of it.

I'm so glad they are grown and in college.

I so hate the number of miles between us.

Star Trek Days

So here we are, living in our Star Trek reality...

Heather is talking to Jesse and Trevor and Darrelle on the other side of the world, watching them as she does.

So nice, eh?

Makes the distance so much less severe.

Sci Fi Life

When I was a little girl, we used to talk about how "some day" you would be able to see each other when you spoke on the phone with people. We used to laugh at how crazy that would be.

In the 90's when we would watch Star Trek (The Next Generation), Captain Picard would sometimes have very important communications with his superiors and they would see each other on their computer screens (woo woo!) as they talked through whatever crisis was at hand.

Maybe we are living out our Sci Fi reality now because just the other night, Jesse joined us for dinner. Of course, Jesse is on the west coast of the United States and we are in eastern Africa.

Our wide band (which we call skinny band here, for obvious reasons) has not been up to the job of carrying an image in both directions when Trevor and I have tried to video skype. But some how, the other night, all the atmospheric conditions were just right. I placed my little white MacBook at the end of our dinner table and there was Jesse (and his friend, Chris Targoni) joining us for our meal!

It was too fun. All the Russell kids were over, with all four of their puppies, so we were a noisy party in all. It was just surreal to be connected that way. It made us all giggly and ridiculous. Jesse said it made him happy for the whole of his day :-)

Trevor's Debut

Trevor has started a blog called "I Wish You Could Be Here" so that he can post the nice little videos that he makes. Using a public blog makes them accesible to all. They are all short and sweet in their different ways.

His new one called 'Rock Climbing' is quite lovely...

I like seeing those boys enjoying this new season :-)

Enjoy!

3 Weeks and Counting...

Ok so the boys have been gone three weeks today.

I was not aware that this was the three week mark as I woke up. I just woke up missing them and feeling sad.

I tried skyping out to Trevor's mobile phone but there was no answer. I tried skyping to Jesse's computer. No answer there either. It was only a little after 9pm their time so I didn't really expect them to be in their rooms.

I left them both e-notes just to say that I had tried to call. Then I sat outside on the porch where Byron was reading, my eyes all red and my face all wet.

Gosh, missing them is like having a big cave for a chest.

It's not that I wish they were here. It's just that I wish we could drop by and take them out for a meal... or meet the new roomates... or even just send them a package easily. I wish that coming home for a weekend wasn't actually impossible.

Byron told me later that before I walked out to the porch he had been sitting there thinking about how bad it feels to be so far away. I guess we are just hitting another layer of it all.

Does pain mean we are in the wrong place?

I don't think so.

Jesse skyped me a couple of hours after I had tried to skype him. The connection was lousy so we just used the chat feature to type back and forth. We finally said goodbye when it was well after his midnight.

My chest doesn't feel so hollow now. Still achey, but not so empty.

For you, Mamma

our adventure

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Enjoy!
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LOVE YOU TOO MUCH!
TREVOR

Little Boys Fly

I walked out onto the beach a few days ago and noticed Jesse and Trevor bending together over a tide pool on the reef. Jesse is 20 and Trevor is almost 18 but my brain instantly changed the scene to years ago when they were about 7 and almost 5, peering over tide pools and wearing the caps that I had sewn long flaps into to protect their necks from the equatorial sun. How familiar it was to see them in the midst of a seaside adventure.

This time they were coaxing an eel out of his hole in the coral and considering who would be the first to try to grab him. (In the end, they flipped him out onto the reef and danced around yelling as he squirmed rather violently between their feet and back into the water.)

Jesse and Trevor left Arusha by shuttle bus yesterday afternoon at 2pm. They got to the Nairobi airport at about 7pm and caught their flight at 11:25pm. They connected in Zurich (with a five hour lay-over) to Washington DC and will connect from there to LA. They will arrive at about 8pm California time.

That's the clinical side of what has happened. Real life is a little different.

Yesterday morning in bed I asked Byron, "If we don't get up, can we keep this day from happening?" "Yep," he answered and closed his eyes.

But we were wrong.

The sun came up and the boys put their last minute things in their bags and made sure they had their passports. When the time came, they boarded the bus and began the journey that would eventually be about 42 hours door to door.

It's SO good to see these boys become men. It's so fun to watch amazing paths opening up ahead of them. It so badly sucks that those paths take them 10,000 miles away.

We are truly excited for them and truly sad for us. Byron and I stood with Colin and Heather by the door of their bus, eyes all full of tears, and waited till they were gone before we moved. Much later in the day I asked Byron how he was doing and he said he wanted to be sick. I knew just exactly what he meant.

Colin says he feels really sad but peaceful about their departure. We all concurred. It's a good thing, the right thing, just a hard thing.

So little boys grow out of their caps with home-made sun flaps and big boys grow out of the need for their mother to be watching from the beach.

And I grow too.

As the dawn was rising yesterday and I tried my best to hold the day back, I kept hearing an Angels and Airways refrain in my head. It says,

"I cannot live, I can't breathe unless you do this with me..."

I don't even know what the rest of the song is about but that refrain has become my prayer. God beckons me on to growth through the circumstances I find myself in. I walk forward only because he walks with me.

And today, as I'm still achey from their departure, I am thankful that he is utterly patient with my pace. I feel him resting here beside me, letting me know we'll walk on only as I'm ready.

(Photo of Jesse paragliding)