Snippets

Good morning, —here are some snippets from the last few weeks which I never managed to form into an actual blog post, until now they are a scrap bag of moments!

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A few weeks back I had a collision with a bee when I was driving the chariot back from the hotsprings. The poor bee definitely got the worst of it, but he got his final shot in, and I always react to bee stings (and Chinua says I always want to show him the swellings of my bee stings, which, to me, is kind of the point of marriage, so yeah, Chinua, I show you my swollen arms after bee stings, that’s why I have a husband.)

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Here’s another story about that drive and how my mind has not yet caught up with reality.

The vehicle we call the chariot is a motorbike with a sidecar attached. The other day when I went to start the car to go to the hot springs and pool yesterday, the battery was dead. No worries, I thought, I can take the chariot with the little boys, while Kenya drives the motorbike with Leafy. Part of the reason we got a car four and a half years ago was that the chariot got too hard to drive with as the kids grew bigger. You have to balance the weight of the sidecar, and as the sidecar got heavier, my arms, neck, and back would ache after driving it.

Here is a photo of the little kids.

It’s not a good photo of me with the little kids. But it shows the evidence in question. This is how slow my brain is or how fast my kids are. These children are the farthest thing from little, and when I am driving the chariot they weigh as much as a small horse.

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Now we are in the south of Thailand and I am slowly finding my way back into my own brain after changing places in the world. I don’t know what it is, I find it hard to adjust to moving spaces, especially when I lose my workplace. Does my brain still work? Does my writing mind still work? Can I make things? Who am I? Am I a ghost or a human woman?

Does anyone else experience a temporary loss of self when they try to settle into a different house?

Perhaps it is the way the house is, combined with the work I need to do here. This space is a little bitty space for us, two bedrooms that have a doorway but no door between them, a tiny living space, a kitchen, and a porch. The walls don’t meet the ceiling, so even whispers are audible from room to room.

I think if this was only vacation, none of this would matter, but the reality is that I am in the middle of intense book edits! Some of you know, some of you are waiting for World Whisperer 6. But after a number of days of having no desk space to work, I have transformed a small burlwood coffee table into a floor desk for myself. It reminds me of my work set up in Goa, all those years ago. A short desk on the floor of the balcony with coconut trees in the distance.

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The other day I was with Kenya in Chiang Mai while we got our car fixed for this journey, and we were walking through the alleys of the city in the heat of the day—and I mean the heat of the day—to get from our lunch restaurant to her orthodontist appointment. It’s so fun to travel with Kenya— she’s witty and brilliant. She kept peppering our walk with comments, as the sun burned down on our skulls, trying to rob us all of our body’s moisture. “This is fine, this is totally fine. People in the desert have been doing this for hundreds of years.” And then, “A small Victorian child would just die if they tried to do this.”

We made it to the orthodontist and other uncomfortable things ensued. Resilience!

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After we got our car fixed, we drove back to Pai, packed the car up, and drove it down to Koh Phangan, an island in the Gulf of Thailand. (That’s the fast-forwarded version of this chain of events.)

On the way, we stopped off at Lopburi, the monkey city, to see the temples covered with monkeys. I love monkeys, and although I wasn’t intending to get close, we didn’t notice the sticks that everyone else picked up and couldn’t really shoo them off. They were very curious about my pants and my necklace, and they came close to us and wanted to investigate, occasionally getting cheeky enough to climb all the way onto my shoulder. They were so cute, and I was in bliss until I wasn’t.

They were curious about all of us, but me in particular. I wonder if I give off motherly vibes. They were gentle and interested, and we didn’t feel threatened, though we tried to keep too many of them from climbing on us.

Photo credit: Kenya

But at one point a young monkey stayed on my arm a little too long and I couldn’t get him off and his mother got angry and ran up and bit me, which, fair enough. Except, “come get your kid, lady, don’t bite me.” But I also get a little tetchy when uninvited people get too close to my kids, so I get it.

Anyhow, the bite led to a rabies vaccine at the hospital, which (maybe?) led to the plague that my family is now recuperating from in our tiny vacation house. Like, the plague that we’ve all been trying to avoid for all these months/years/lifetime.

As with everything, there are negatives and positives:

Negatives: sickness

this was a long way to travel to be sick in a house

this is coinciding with Kenya’s eighteenth birthday (we will reorganize her birthday celebration)

Positives: (my standard take on the positive is don’t tell me the positives, I prefer to only think them up myself when I have had sufficient time to be a little negative, thank you)

mildish sickness

I wanted close time together as a family so I got it?

we are on a beach, on a rocky outcropping, and can walk down to the beach all on our lonesome, without seeing anyone

we have a big, beautiful balcony

Chinua, so far, remains well. He was boosted just before we got down here, so he has all that special boosting power.

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So, did the adventure lead to the monkeys lead to the bite lead to the hospital lead to the sickness? We’ll never know, the sickness is kind of everywhere, it seems. What is it ever that leads to anything else? We always want to think we know, to keep the bad things from happening, but we don’t know, we just don’t know.

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I am a rattling cat bag of emotions and wild spikes of carpet thought. Last night my mind decided to torture me for a while, keeping me from sleep and whispering thoughts of things that have been ruined forever and “how could you?” and then making me feel as though a fly had landed on my legs every five minutes or so.

But morning has come and I am still here. Still able to tell a story about this life, still full of grace and peace. Look at the way God has loved us. Look at how God has formed this life. We trust in the crazy curvaceous paths of the Holy One.

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The twists and turns of this story, though, are like, “You thought a bee sting was no big deal? Try a monkey bite. That’s no big deal either? Here’s some fresh pandemic infection for you. Why don’t you isolate with your family in a tiny house?”

Listen, world, I get it, you are fearsome. I’m duly intimidated. Not necessary anymore, thank you.

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This is fine, we’re fine, desert people have done this for hundreds of years.

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