I had to drive to the other side of the island today to pick
up a book for my community college class. I was finally in the car by myself
after shuttling kids all week to different pre-season practices and play
rehearsals. I’ve agreed to teach a freshman composition class in addition to
the literature class this semester. I should be writing a syllabus and making
plans for the semester, instead of blogging. But my thoughts keep straying back
to the drive. I took Cross Island road,
which is one of three roads that go through the middle of the island. It’s a sparsely populated and hilly road –
with lots of chuckholes and dips that made me pray for our recently patched
front wheel. (My prayer: for our 10 year old car to just survive until it’s
time to move again.) As I crested a hill, the sun was shining from behind a
black rain cloud – another monsoon on the way. The interplay of shadows and
light on the grassy hills was arresting, the kind of vision that makes you
understand why people stay here, why people who leave come back.
I have a friend who says she is suspicious of people who
come here from the mainland and stay for years. “They either are running away
from something or someone or have something to hide,” she says. I don’t think she’s including people who
marry someone local or who come here for mission work, but she evidently is not
adding Guam to her list of potential retirement spots when her husband’s time
is up.
I don’t share her suspicions. I can understand why people
stay: it is beautiful here, and island time is a nice pace of life. I don’t mind not having a lot of places to
shop. I like the mild climate. I love that our kids play in the street and know
all the neighbors. I’ve yet to experience a major storm, so the ocean seems
nothing but beautiful, teeming with life, always calling: look at me, look
above me, look within me. After growing up landlocked, I now know why people
get drawn into lifelong love affairs with the sea.
But as beautiful as the moment was this afternoon, it also
made me homesick. Waving grasses, big
sky, sudden storms. The summer schedule.
if not the summer weather, (listening to the weather on the radio is
monotonous: partly cloudy skies, chance of thunderstorms, highs near 87, lows
near 76, today, yesterday, tomorrow, next month.) is drawing to a close. My
relatives are at the Michigan lake house, that restorative place (see the E.B.
White essay "Once More to the Lake," which I can't find online...) every bit as lovely as anywhere, where lows dip to the 50s, and
highs rarely top 85, and when it rains, it rains all day, not just a bit in the
afternoon. Do I feel left out, even though I am in a tropical paradise? Of
course.
It doesn’t help to have read a little Wendell Berry lately -
essays about his work from the book, "The Human Vision of Wendell Berry." He makes you
yearn to be rooted like no one else. He makes it seem right to love the places
of our childhood as much as we love the people.
The upswell of longing, of the sense that I’m missing out
on something in life, that somewhere life is going on without me – I’m missing
the party at the lake!, was momentary, although I indulged it a bit. These
moments usually are. Although I was
sorry not to get back to the states this summer, the summer has passed much
more quickly than I anticipated in between our trip to Japan and the kids’
activities. And since we’ve reached our year anniversary of moving here, I’ve
stopped thinking of this as the new house. This is home for now.
As a military family you have two choices: always look
forward to the next move, which you imagine to be better, or you can make the
best of where you are. Obviously, we try
to live according to the bloom where you are planted mantra. But there’s always a voice in the back of the
mind saying, this isn’t permanent. Don’t get attached.
Then again, nothing is.
And a little pain sometimes is welcome, especially after days that are
so busy that you don’t have time to feel much of anything except rushed. I can fall in love with the drive across the
island, love it more perhaps because our stay is temporary, and I’ll feel sad
to leave it. The potholes are charming, right? I can wish to be elsewhere, playing cards with
the cousins, or trying to keep warm in the frigid lake water, then trying to
catch the warmth of the sun on the float, when the wind keeps interrupting. And at the same time I can love the feeling
of being kept afloat while snorkeling in warm salt water, where every time I
look beneath the surface I am amazed at the vibrant world that carries on
below.
We’ve said goodbye to some friends we really liked this
summer, but we’ve met three new neighbors in the last couple of weeks, and I’ve
finally met some of the other community college faculty after being the night
owl last semester. I’m becoming more
entrenched in this life, even though our stay is not long. I sometimes wish I could live a life in a
community like the one Wendell Berry describes, but most of the time I’m too
busy living in this transient community we’re a part of to dwell on a life that
isn’t mine.
Maybe our roots aren't deep, but they are wide, like a lot of the plants here - shallow but tenacious orchid roots come to mind. They cling to whatever surface they are attached to.
Maybe our roots aren't deep, but they are wide, like a lot of the plants here - shallow but tenacious orchid roots come to mind. They cling to whatever surface they are attached to.
We still have a lot of the island to explore and hope to see
more of the Pacific. After a year here,
we are familiar with the roads and our favorite beaches and hikes. And it is with familiar things that we fall
in love. Whether we’re here one or two more years, we’ll make the best of the
time we are given. Which is all we can do and all that is asked of us.
