(Photos to come)

* Animals!  Angora goats, sheep, yaks, snakes, and one beloved bear. (YaYa, our resident adorer of animals, was of course right smack in the center of everything.)

* An old Himalayan village with carefully crafted wooden buildings, stables underneath for the sake of the heat.  Women carrying basket after basket of greens up the hillsides for their cows.  My favorite is when the purple clover is perched on the very top.

* The traditional village women here wear handwoven wool wraps.  One day I saw a woman weaving one.  She let me watch her for a while, but declined a photo.

* Orchards everywhere with teenager apples in the midst of growing up to be adult apples.

* The monsoon has come.  I still get nervous with the heavy heavy rains, not yet used to the fact that it’s completely normal.  Everyone has been waiting for the rains.  We are so glad for them.

* Good conversations and good coffee.

* A long walk through a forest.

* Solo is no longer a baby content to sit quietly with us while we wait for our food in a restaurant.  Chinua and I pass him back and forth like a football, each of us holding him until we can’t amuse him any longer. Kid A, on the other hand, simply looks for a chess set.  Things get complicated, though, when he is playing with YaYa and she gets frustrated and starts knocking over the pieces.

* A beautiful jam with a Swiss accordian player, Israeli guitarist, and Chinua on the mandolin.  The Swiss couple happened to have a tin whistle and I thankfully played along, although it had been a couple of years since I played one.  The muscle memory was somewhere back there, waiting.  As we played, pieces came back to me bits at a time, like a small child waking up from a nap.

* Tomorrow we leave, piling into the jeep, singing, playing 20 questions, excited to get home to our house and kitchen. (Mama is excited to make herself numerous cups of tea in the morning.)

1. We are going on a little adventure tomorrow.  I’m ready for a way out of here for a few days.  It’s true that we live in India, (which is adventurous) but it’s also true that we rarely venture beyond walking distance, and if that, only to buy paper, go to the tailor, or get some cough drops.  (Though sometimes we drop in at the local Korean restaurant.)

Tomorrow our jeep will pick us up at the nearby road.  We will walk along the stony path, down the stairs, by the creekbed, and up the hill, and then off we go in the jeep to Manali.  I think the journey takes 7 hours, but I don’t think that’s calculated for children.

2. It was quiet, today, in the Stage Carriage, until Cate asked if I had heard that Michael Jackson died.  She was sitting in front of me, beside a Tibetan woman wearing the traditional chupa.  The Stage Carriage is a jeep for public transportation.  It has three bench seats, and doesn’t drive for anything less than four people per row.  It’s a cozy ride, to say the least.  (And it’s really called a Stage Carriage.)  For 10 rupees, you can hop in the Stage Carriage in McLeod Ganj and ride to Lower Dharamsala, where you can find a tailor to make you yet more children’s clothes which your children will grow out of in six months.

Anyways. Suddenly the jeep was alive with discussion.  The Tibetan woman beside Cate shook her head.  “It’s because he was trying to make himself whiter,” she said.  A Polish Buddhist nun in maroon robes was sitting next to me.  “His music was so so beautiful.  Did you like him?”

“I liked his music very much,” I said.  “But I think his story is very sad.  He got too famous, too young.”

“Yes,” the Polish Buddhist nun continued, “he gave all of himself away, and had nothing left for him.”

Cate was still talking with the Tibetan lady up front.  “Yes, he was very young, it’s very sad,” she said.

“Everyone, everywhere, is sad,” said the Tibetan lady.

“And did you ever see his dvds?  He was such a great dancer,” added the Buddhist nun.

And I shook my head.  Reminiscing about Michael Jackson in India in the Stage Carriage with these two ladies was almost too much for my grip on reality to handle.

I popped over to my friend Carrien’s blog to see if she had written about one special afternoon, many years ago, when we sat outside Michael Jackson’s gate on top of our van, singing worship songs with gusto. (She had.)  My best friend Dori had such a strong sympathy for him, and she desperately wanted to try to tell him that God loved him.  We weren’t allowed in, so the four of us sang with the rolling hills of Los Olivos swelling all around us. Dori also wrote him a letter.  I do hope it was delivered.

3. I should have known better.

Sometimes when your husband is away and you are tired and not getting a lot of sleep and you live somewhere far from where you have lived before, you might have a small crisis and cut your hair.

But the good news is, you only cut off the bottom half.  You emerge from the bathroom with a handful of dreadlocks that have been with you for almost seven years.  Your neck is much cooler, but you need it cleaned up, made the same length, so you head to the barber.

You should have known better.

What part of “I just want it tidied up” sounds like “Go ahead and shave it.”

I couldn’t really find a good after pic, probably because it only looks different from the very back.

I should have known better, but at least I can say I’ve been to an Indian barber.  And it’s SO much cooler.

(First 3 pics taken by Becca, and the last one was taken by Chinua)

Now that I am able to pull myself to a standing position, I will do so at any and every opportunity!  No one will be able to stop me!  I will be a STANDING BABY!

Mama would like me to go to sleep, I can tell, and though I am tired, there is simply nothing better than standing.  I will pull myself to STANDING!

She has just come in for a little bout of singing, I see.  Little does she know that singing is no use against the mighty STAND.  It doesn’t matter what you sing, Mama: Twinkle twinkle, You are my Solo (to the tune of You are my Sunshine- Mama is witty), Jesus Loves Me… None will work.  For no matter how tired I am, I will continue to pull myself to my feet, and then cry because I can’t get back down.  This is my superpower.

She is sighing and complaining about her back for some reason, but still standing with my little red mouth open, I can sense a victory!  I will stand, I will stand, I will stand.  I wonder… if I butt my head against her shirt with my mouth open will I get numnums?  Yes, yes I will!

She has laid me back down again, and I will not put up with this.  In another minute I’ll stand again, and that’ll show her!  In just another minute.  Perhaps if I just put my thumb in my mouth…  perhaps… zzzzzzzz

If you’ve ever sat on your unmade bed slumped into a shape like a letter ‘C’, if you’ve ever hit your foot on the bottom of a chair and messed up your toenail polish, if you’ve ever spoken sharply to your kids and then found out that they were innocent, if you’ve ever run out of money, run out of time, run out of patience…

If you’ve ever been too hot, forgotten to drink enough water, stopped exercising for a year…  If you’ve ever put your head down on a concrete floor and given up, only to peel yourself up and continue washing dishes a few minutes later, if you’ve ever been late for dinner or paying a bill, if you’ve ever sighed overly loudly and then been caught peeking to see if anyone noticed…

If you’ve ever been so bored your teeth hurt, if you’ve ever looked at the days before you with dismay, if you’ve ever looked at your face in the mirror with dismay, if you’ve ever made a bad hair decision, if you’ve ever bumped your head really hard and then cussed and then felt bad because you just happened to be on camera, if you’ve ever blamed people just to make yourself feel better, if you’ve ever been a blamosaurus rex…

If you’ve ever had a cough for days and days and days, if you’ve ever broken a tooth on popcorn, if anyone has ever found glass in your food, if you’ve ever looked at crafting blogs and despaired, if you’ve ever woken up and realized that you are pretty sure that you are totally mediocre,

well, the following story is for you.

Once upon a time there was a girl who lived in India, and she was a girl, but she was also a mother, which means that if she was having a bad day she wasn’t allowed to lock her bedroom door and refuse to come out.  (It’s just kind of one of the rules, if you’re a girl and a mom.  Also if you’re just a mom.)

So this girl who was a mom was having water problems at her house again, and she had a couple of wise friends who had spent a lot of time in the mysterious land of India.  These friends told her, “If you want to get anything done, you have to get mad!”  The girl wasn’t at all sure that she could be angry to someone, but she thought she’d give it a shot.  So she called her landlord, (again) and she said, “Listen, I just can’t live this way anymore.  I’m spending all my money to send my laundry out, I can’t cook, we can’t bathe.  This is ridiculous!”

She didn’t sound angry, but she did succeed in appearing rather pathetic.  And she learned from the landlord that all had been done that could be done, and nothing more could be solved with the water crisis until the monsoon.  They would just have a little bit of water, each and every day.

And this is what happened to the girl: she pulled one sleeve until it turned inside out, and the other sleeve until it just tore right off her shirt, and then she hopped on one foot in a circle, and then she turned red and then she just began to weep.  The water thing was taking too many thoughts, and the thoughts became bumpy, and the thoughts were not smooth, the way she liked her thoughts to be.  And the children had grown fangs.

So she cried.  She sat down on the floor and cried and cried, and soon all the things that were sad but that she hadn’t cried about (because she was a girl AND a mom) were filling up her head and demanding that tears be dedicated to them too.  And then the neighbors began to line up and write small things on pieces of paper, things that needed to be cried about, and then the internets joined in, and the girl who was a mom wept until her tears formed their own clouds and a great storm came.  The great storm turned into a great monsoon and after a few days, the water came rushing into all the tanks in the village.

All the villagers were very happy, plus they’d had their sad things cried over, and so they bought the girl who was a mom a bathtub of her very own, so she could soak her old feet in it and then rub some nice smelling lotion into them.

And it was all because the girl who was a mom had let herself cry. (There’s no rule against it!)

The End

Father’s Day has been a bit eclipsed, here, by the flow of news of the Revolution in Iran. (Although without a doubt I’m sure that I know the two best fathers in the world, in my own father and the father of my children.)

Please go and read Chinua’s post.

And pray, for God loves justice and He loves the oppressed.  He loves the widow and the fatherless, the bowed down and the crippled.  Bring Justice to a people who are standing lest they be crushed, Oh God.

Amen.

In an Exciting New Development, I have a new photoblog.  I call it JourneyPegs :: People on the way.

I find myself wanting to show you the people that I see, and sometimes I just can’t work them into a post, or I don’t feel like throwing the photo on the front of an unrelated post.  So JourneyPegs is for people that I meet or run into along the way.

The first photo, though, is of my dear Becca.  I met her when she was born and my parents brought her home, though I don’t remember it because I was only two.

Once upon a time Rae’s husband came home from Turkey.  He had been away for almost three weeks.  She was so so happy, and showed him so by hunkering down with a high fever for the whole day, telling her husband from her fever dreams that black people weren’t allowed to enlist in the military during World War I. It was very upsetting to her.  She may even have cried a little.

Once upon a time there was a boy named Kid A who was obsessed with the word Mister.  Also, Missus or Miss.  Almost every noun was supposed to start with one of these words, according to this boy.  So the family read “Green Eggs and Mr. Ham” with Mr. Sam I Am as the star.  They ate Mr. Porridge for breakfast, went to Mr. Bed at night, and sang Mrs Songs.  They loved to eat Mr. Mangos, and Mrs Bananas.  And their favorite time of day was when they got to play in Mr. Outside.

Once upon a time there was a dog who thought she lived at Rae’s house.  She saw her milling around for a couple of days, and then took a closer look, finally seeing a tag with a phone number on it.  She called the number on the tag, and made a new friend.  But why didn’t Rae look sooner?  That’s the mystery of the story.  Maybe it was because of the fever.  Maybe it was because she couldn’t be bothered, or because there is always some dog on her porch.  When she was asked by the dog’s owner whether she had fed the dog, she said no, and the owner was glad, because if she was hungry she’d be less likely to run away again.  But then Rae’s daughter said, “I fed her my biscuits!”

Once upon a time Rae’s baby was pushing out his fourth tooth in about a week.  But that’s okay, because Rae thought secretly that sleeping was overrated anyways.

Once upon a time Rae was walking along a path towards her home when she saw a Himalayan woman, wearing her dupatta on her head, standing beside a pile of iron window grates.  She made some sort of interested exclamation about how interesting it was!  Window grates!  A pile of them!  Next to the woman!  and the woman took this as encouragement to impress on Rae the need for her to carry one of them down the hill.  Rae made a faint protest about the fact that she was already carrying things, including a new broom, and the woman chose a slightly smaller iron window grate for her.  She was left with no choice, carrying the window grate in a trembling arm, as other women exclaimed and laughed at her on their way back up to pick up another one.

Once upon a time, Rae was so, so tired.  And so happy that Chinua was back.  And it all mingled together in a great wash of giddiness, like a wave.

We are as sick as dogs.  My darling Becca left and the next day we could barely crawl out of bed.  Or, I could barely crawl out of bed.  Trouble is, all these kids!  And my Superstar Husband returns tomorrow.

I didn’t want to call anyone, for fear of contaminating them.  I prayed, instead.  When my friend from Germany showed up in my hallway, (just to check on us) I burst into tears. “What can I do?” she asked.  And proceeded to wash dishes and prepare dinner, read to cranky sick kids and sweep.

Today I am feeling… well, like a dishrag if a dishrag had sensitive skin, a bad cough, and a sore throat.  But Friend from Germany came over again, and did more reading, more washing dishes, and she chopped vegetables, although I was able to pull myself together enough to make soup.

I am very proud.  I like to have everything together.  I don’t like to have people come over and find everything a mess and me out of it and everyone whiny and cranky.  Which is why I think I find myself in situations all the time where I have to ask for help.  It’s more of God whittling away at my character.  What will I be when He is done?

They are delicious.  And believe me, I used to be of the “they-look-and-feel-too-much-like-eyeballs” camp too.  Something about seasonal fruit really gets you excited, though.  And I’ve been converted to the “I-love-Litchis!” camp.

My good friends, Carrien and Aaron, founders of The Charis Project, have been working hard for a while now to gather support for a children’s home in Thailand.  The home is a safe place for over forty children who have been displaced because of vicious attacks on their tribes in Burma.  Wandering in search of safety, they were found by a man named Chala.

This man has dedicated his life to taking care of these kids, but because he was born in a time and place that does not permit him to have the kind of wealth it takes to raise 40 kids, we have the unique opportunity to help him. If he cannot gather the support he needs to take care of them, the children’s house will not be able to continue.

The Charis Project is trying to gain 80 sponsors by the end of June.  I just signed up to sponsor.  As I was going through the site, I read of a boy named Saewang, who lost both of his parents due to violence “between the Burmese military and Karen soldiers.”  Once again I’ll say that I have no idea what it is like to live in a country where my own government would kill me or my parents without thought.  I have no idea what it is like to be 11 and just barely landed, my feet just dusting the ground because I would like to stay in my new home… but will it still be standing?

The website makes it clear that without the safety of the home, Saewang and kids like him will be in danger of starvation, violence, sex-trafficking and exploitation.

I have seen so many good and bad waves sweeping across this global community of the interwebs.  Gossip, mild entertainment, wonder, comparison, thankfulness, and passion.  I would like this to be one of the scenarios where we turn something around.  For forty kids, it is a life altering month.

Please post about this, tweet about it, sponsor a kid or two, (they are looking for 80 sponsors because each child needs two- one for housing and food and one for education) join the cause on facebook, and make up a song to sing about it.

You can read Carrien’s post here.

Check out the Charis Project website here.

Join the facebook cause here.

And sponsor a child here.