Ponderings

As I sit down to write, an Iraqi refugee family sleeps in the next room. I can hear the father coughing and the sound of someone shifting in bed. We spent the evening entertaining the three year old girl, Mirhan, while her parents tried to rest and get some relief from oncoming colds. But even wild little Mirhan is resting now, so it is quiet. I know they are worn out from saying goodbye to everything familiar. Yahya cried last night when he spoke of his father. He doesn't know if he will see him again. He doesn't know if he is safe.

A mile away a Conoglese family is unpacking boxes at Bryan House. They are the first family spending their first night under the roof of our "dream house". There is still an overwhelming amount of work to be done there, but today makes the dream feel a little bit more real. Soon three orphaned children will join their only living relatives there in that apartment at Bryan House. Two years ago we visited them in a refugee camp in Kibuye Rwanda. Now we will help their Aunt and Uncle save to buy them a real future.

Tonight a Burundian family around the corner from Bryan House is missing their father and husband. Four hundred miles away in Minnesota my Grandmother is missing my Grandfather. And here we are still missing Bryan. Wherever you go you find that people are mostly the same at their core. They love their families. They want what's best for their children. And they mourn the people they lose. We should stick together. Our family is bigger than we think.

This week we found out that our dear friends from Mauritania, the Diallos, the first refugee family we ever met, are thinking of moving away to Ohio were there are other families from their home country. They have been the only ones here for seven years and they are growing weary of the separation. I don't know what we will do without them. They are the reason for all of this. They taught us what family really means. I want them to be happy, but my heart will break a little when they go. I'm afraid that little Yasmin will forget us. There is a permanent string tied from my heart to hers.

Lately I feel a little like we've been running a marathon at a Sprinters pace. I long for a speed that's more managable, but I think it will be a few more miles before we can slow down. I've put a lot of myself on hold and sometimes I'm afraid those pieces won't still be there when I finally have time to go back to them. Everyday I get emails from Vermont College classmates who are publishing their books and I wonder if I will ever have the space I need to nurture a novel into publication. I wonder too if we will ever hold our own babies, or only, always, someone else's.

I guess if I had to choose between what I have and what I feel like I'm missing, I'd still choose this exact moment: with the Iraqi family sleeping nearby, with boxes being unpacked at Bryan House, with Yasmin and Musa and Dollar and Baby Rick and now Mirhan as my "adopted" children, and with Rick as my companion next to me when I lay down to rest.

Life is so wonderful and terrible and strange.