Safe Keeping

My husband and I like change. After a few years in the same house, we tend to think, what’s next? Change on its best days can feel like a hot shower, a change of clothes, resolutions scribbled neatly on a crisp white piece of paper. 

Not all change is created equal. We laid no welcome mat at the thought of our friends leaving. 

We lived one rice paddy away from them and regularly traded sugar, eggs, and diarrhea meds. We also exchanged children for science experiments, extra Saturday morning donuts, and absurd tips for making chicken taste beefier. The daily dinging of our kids’ bicycle bells outside our gates signaled play. Time for potato chip picnics, cricket matches in fields of cow pies, and the exchange of complicated handshakes. 

Now we live an ocean apart after five years of thereness. Not just any kind of there. There when culture shock wrecked us and we needed to be told who we really were. There to be Americans with for dozens of Thanksgivings and Halloweens. There to hold our weeping kids when our husky went missing. There to sing alongside and bounce ideas off of. There to exchange root canal war stories with and to drive us to the hospital day or night. There to wash our dirty undies during power outages and water shortages. There to toast mugs of yuletide egg nog and Old Monk with and to laugh until tears rolled down. There to miss our family together, only to discover that’s what we have become in all this being there. 

And now they are gone. Poof! 

What happens to the memories of cutting homemade gnocchi ropes and building waffle birthday cakes and airport pickups with bread still warm? The listening, loving, confessing, giving. What happens to these small things that gather like dust and become something great? When did friendship form and why does its absence leave my stomach sick, as though I’ve swallowed my food too fast? 

The glory of this hard-earned love was pulsing with breath just yesterday. How did what we have turn sepia-toned overnight, like photos of things long gone? We travel and don’t own a home to fill with picture books. Memories take time to put down in ink. Most memories slip between the fingers like sand. The thing is, I want our affection, in all its glory and cost, kept safe. I have heard the psalmist say there’s a bottle for my tears (what an enormous vessel that must be). I would like to request another bottle for what has blossomed into fragrant flower these past five years with Joel, Mandi, Tay, Noah, and Allie. When we are finally Home and done with all this moving of furniture, let’s spill that bottle onto a wide oak table and enjoy the contents like some fantastic button collection.