Home Away From Home

I’ve had a magical time during my visit home. My first stop was Denver to meet up with residency friends who had organized a weekend in the mountains together, to hang out, eat together, ski and go snowshoeing. I appreciated buzzing straight by the hustle and bustle of the city and into the mountains Saturday morning, falling instantly into the comfortable conversation that happens when in the company of old friends. Oh how I’ve missed the grand Rocky Mountains, the crisp, clean, sharp air flavored with pine, the dramatic skyline of white peak against blue sky. The mountains showed off their majesty, their clean natural state. Everything seems so pristine, so fresh, so pure. And I reveled in it all. For two days I patted around a beautiful cabin talking with friends, catching up on the events of our lives and thoughts they elicited, snow-shoed through a forest, catching my breath both with the sudden altitude change and the beauty of my surroundings.

From the Colorado peaks, I drove to the plains of Kansas to spend a week on my family’s farm. My brother drove down with his family and we spent a week of riding tractors and 4-wheelers, jumping on hay bails, checking for new baby calves, eating, drinking, talking, laughing, resting, and reveling in the funny antics of my nephew Conor and the newborn cuddliness of my new nephew Caden.

Friends came in to celebrate St. Patty’s day and others for a vacation on the farm. I was able to relax in the atmosphere of the my family’s home, in moments spent on the deck looking out to the prairie at sunset, in the tranquil peace that seems to rise up from the dirt roads, in the wheat fields newly green with sprouts of spring, and in the prairies with their yellow and brown grasses waving in the afternoon wind. My eyes drank in a vista of broad-stretching fields greeting a distant horizon, night skies blanked with stars, unpolluted by city lights or burping pollution. At home I finally exhaled. I didn’t even realize I’d been holding my breath.

After time on the farm, I headed to Kansas City where I celebrated new pregnancies, new births, children growing, reunions and catching up with the best of friends. I spent the evenings at my brother’s house, being Conor’s faithful playmate, and Candy’s occasional relief to the needs of infant Caden. I got to reconnect with my brother in the eventings after everyone had gone to bed. I had the honor of watching him teach Monday when his school resumed, amazed at this professional side of my brother that seemed to command attention and respect from his students. I had the chance to be button-popping proud.

It is easy to sink back into the comforts of home, the love of family, the joy of friends, the fun of reconnection, shared moments and story-telling. I avoided heading out in public since the crowds, the shops tended to bring on a strange sense of anxiety; my body craved simpler places. As long as I was with family and friends, the world made sense, was inviting, was healing and perfect.

Anticipating going back to Haiti was difficult. Patrick and Solomon were the pulling magnets there, but from my vantage point of my brother’s home with clean water pouring from the sink, plentiful showers, and faces that I love and cherish, the foreign, dirty streets of Port-au-Prince lost their luster. Each new goodbye as the week came to an end brought a new rush of emotion, of questioning, of aching lonesomeness.

But the minute I sat myself down in the waiting room for the flight to Port-au-Prince, I was reminded why this culture of people has captivated me so. The room quickly became a buzz with a group conversation about “the problems of Haiti” and ideas of how to make things better. Everyone took part in the conversation, whether stranger or friend. I was pulled in when it was clear that I understood a little Creole, and I was commended for my fledgling grasp of the language. I had to smile. The contrast of the waiting rooms in the Ft. Lauderdale airport filled with Haitians and the Chicago airport filled with Americans was stark, funny, and interesting. I enjoy both cultures in different ways, and certainly some days desire solitude rather than being puled into random conversations. I too like connecting with people via text and e-mail, but the know-no-stranger mentality of my Haitian flight-mates was a warm and welcoming reminder of the community I was going home to. My home away from home.

After I walked off the AA flight into the warm tropical air, the scent of burning fires riding the breeze, I smiled. A baggage handler greeted me by name as I emerged from the airport, my luggage teetering on a cart. “I’m a friend of Pastor Patrick.” Bigger smile. He lead me straight to my husband waiting in the shade of a mango tree, cradling an alert and happy little boy content in the arms of his Dad. Ah, home. I have arrived.