being back, all the strange and good

Sitting back down to this, swung over here across a continent and ocean, I remember that it is Advent, that two years ago this time I was also waiting and wondering. Except I know the answer. "S-a nascut Mantuitorul, Domnul si Izbavitorul."

It's good being back. It smells the same--I'm adjusting already, but Sunday morning breathing in you could tell how close to the ocean we are, the air different altogether. The eggs are really strange, really rubbery besides being what look like unnatural colors. The milk is incredible, though. I have missed the milk.

And it's milder. Warm, even. Tomorrow morning we might get up and see the sunrise over the ocean, all bundled in hoodies because it's fifty degrees out. That's something American I've missed: hoodies. The idea of bundling in one, though, and listening to people say it's freezing at that temperature seems foreign now.

That's it, mostly. Settling back in has been quick and easy, picking up an old life. A lot of good things have come together, mostly in unexpected ways.

**

This has been sitting as a draft since last week. It was too cloudy to see the sun come up so today, ten days after I got here, eight since I've been in Wilmington, I drove down to the south end of Wrightsville. It's different altogether. The dunes on the left are all gone and the water looked much closer (although it may have just been high tide). I'd forgotten how much wind comes off the water, the constant sound of the whole body of it moving. You don't hear it when you always do, so I walked and listened, mostly, watched the finer sand blow across the beach. It was like watching fog roll in, only sped up. A different set of tides.

Meanwhile it's snowing in Romania. And I am breathing in salt air, the taste of the sound in the back of my throat. And warm enough to prance around without shoes and in short sleeves and chase the seagulls, wind and hair and just about anything else not tied down whipping around. I think even the way we talk was blowing around in it, a hopeful rocking swaying sound. A thing you can catch. Or that catches you. Maybe I just mean the whole thing's caught me.


I think that's enough for now. Last night I had my first group FD presentation. Only four more to go this week. If you're the praying type...