It's raining now. Hard rain, the sky and the blocs all the same steel grey. It's strange to live in a place where the seasons exist as we learned them from books in elementary school, from the decorations in the halls. April showers really do bring May flowers. Who knew?
So it's been raining a lot, but a few weeks ago we had a hot week, a summer-without-humidity week. It was perfect. On the first of May--a national holiday here--the student group had a cookout at this place called Platou Trivale. Let me tell you something. It's a big empty field in the middle of a forest/park in Pitesti, and it has been instrumental in the peace-making between me and Pitesti. We played volleyball for a little while before the ball busted, kicked it around a bit, and resumed volleyball once we found another ball.
Standing there in the dusty heat, the twelve-year-old tomboy in me delighting in being a little sweaty and sending a ball that plops rather than soars flying to the other end of the field, and taking pride at the words mama ce form are! and se pricepe la fotbal--words like delighting come to mind and you wonder if you'll write about this later. You run after the ball, kicking up dust, wondering whether you're already that brown this early in the year or if you're just getting dirty, and you think, this is a good day. I will be silly with my students, play volleyball with them, do handstands, get filthy and just generally run and romp about.
The whole day--the wide field and the yellowness of the light--made me think of a short story I read some six years ago in my first fiction class. Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff. It's better than the title would lead you to believe, for this reason:
Then the last two boys arrive, Coyle and a cousin of his from Mississippi. Anders has never met Coyle’s cousin before and will never see him again. He says hi with the rest but takes no further notice of him until they’ve chosen sides and some asks the cousin what position he wants to play. “Shortstop,” the boy says. “Short’s the best position they is.” Anders turns and looks at him. He wants to hear Coyle’s cousin repeat what he’s just said, but he knows better than to ask. The others will think he’s being a jerk, ragging the kid for his grammar. But that isn’t it, not at all – it’s that Anders is strangely roused, elated, by those final two words, their pure unexpectedness and their music. He takes the field in a trance, repeating them to himself.
It reminds me of home, of the many different places and ways that word evokes. Wilmington, two scrappy little kids in our beat up neighborhood, one saying to the other, who's wearing a Fedora, "Yo, let's go throw rocks at some cars." My brother and I as kids, "we was down playin by the ditch," knowing how to say it right but using the correct form selectively because that's not how you talked. 'They is' is my favorite, all its variations, really. Anywhere there becomes they. I love it in hiphop, I love it in little kids, those brilliant linguistics who wrap their minds and mouths around any language you throw at them. A little girl in a home video twenty years old, hiding behind a pine and saying, I coughed on the tree, ah caw-uffed on da tree-uh!
I love my language, its music, its possibilities and innovation. And I thought about that the other day, dry and hot, high sun, wondering at the ways these two languages are merging in me. And standing there, dizzy from hours of volleyball and not enough to drink--struck either by dehydration or surprise that so many things from so many different places had come together on a plateau in Arges, Romania. That a thought can stretch across twenty separate years and make a single succinct thing of it all.
I've been around families a lot since I've been in Romania, especially in Pitesti. It's a change, for sure, especially after four years of college where everyone was around my age or older. Not a lot of families, certainly no kids and mostly just young people. But here I get to hang out a good deal with my pastor's kids, four of them and all under ten.
Here's another change: things feel like they're falling in place. There's a settled feeling. I'm doing my job and am able to be involved way more now, am learning an enormous amount. My kitchen feels like my kitchen (I think it's because I finally own some cooking utensils, mostly a spatula that assists in making fantastic omelets) and I feel like a grown-up when I'm in it. The truth is that I've been doing this for five or six years now, living on my own and feeding myself and paying all my bills--being an adult. I don't know why it should suddenly feel more like it now. Anyway, there's another aspect to it.
It's being around all these kids, these families. My peer group is now not just college students and singles but families and little kids. And there's a maternal side that's been coming out that I was afraid for a long time I was just too awkward to have. But there it is, and the other night I was at a birthday party for the most charming, wonderful five-year-old you've ever met. And while playing with them, I started dancing with his four-year-old sister.
You should know that their floor is hardwood. Or some kind of hardwood mimicker with a very slippery surface which makes dancing quite fun if you're little and someone bigger is spinning you. Or if you're bigger and you're sliding across playing bowling for little kids. (Kidding, but that could be fun, no? I know a certain nine-year-old who'd love it, especially if you were really good at missing but almost not.) Anyway, we're dancing and I'm spinning her, and all of a sudden she slips. Didn't think this one ahead very well. My hand was around her wrist so I had to let go of it or else it would have twisted and, I don't know, very possibly could have broken. So I let go (right hand) and with my right hand (no idea what my left hand was doing, probably just hanging there forgetting it existed) grabbed the upper part of her other arm, the higher one. And I have no idea how the physics of this are even possible, but she somehow managed to pivot around her other arm and fall in a way that gravity took no part in and then land on her head.
I tried to look ha-ha surprised so she wouldn't cry (look at those dance moves!) and she didn't but mostly because her mom rushed in and saved the day. So I say to these settling down feelings, this playing mom and wondering if I'll have a handful of boys one day (just wrote that 'wonday'--ohf, my brain), to the 'logical next step': okay, but I'm watching you. Sometime, not now, but sometime. You are good preparation, and for that I appreciate you--I'd like to not drop anymore kids on their head, if I have the choice, but I guess even that's good practice.
For now, though, it's nice just to be around other people's families. And not to have to worry about the logistics of getting to the point where mine might happen. Just being now, an awesome job and friends and good community, watching that turkey of a five-year-old and his brother and sisters light up the room.
Sorry for the radio silence as of late. It's been a busy last few weeks between Formacion and preparing to move to Pitesti. And as of Saturday, I'm here now, but as per usual, life is a circus.
Saturday morning I left my apartment in Bucuresti, went to the Yorks' to pack everything in the car and move. The plan was to move into a garsoniera (studio apartment) because it was pretty cheap (except I wasn't sure how I felt about living alone and turns out it was in a really sketch neighborhood--not normally a big deal being used to that, but without roommates it's more problematic). It's a long story, but about ten minutes before we packed the last of the things in the car, we got a phone call saying the apartment was no longer available. Meaning, hey, I'm moving to Pitesti today but we're not exactly sure where.
So I stayed a night with the general secretary and his family and last night I brought myself along with all my stuff to another girl's apartment. However, I'm sharing a room (and a pull-out couch) with a sixteen-year-old girl. Anyway, I don't want to say too much because it's the internet but it's interesting already how God is working things. I'll say that she and I have similar backgrounds. And that I really wanted a room to myself--fellow introverts, you understand.
There's so much about this place that's perfect. All of it, really, except for sharing a bed and room with someone. I don't say this to complain, and not because beggars can't be choosers, but because I wonder what my God is doing, at what he is doing. And I already I'm being stretched, but this is a good thing. Difficult, I'm expecting, but in addition to the good things I'm thinking will come out of it are all the other awesome things about living here.
So there's that. Pitesti is nice so far. Completely different from Bucuresti (much smaller, for one). And student work begins tomorrow. Today I met up with a girl here and we walked around a bit, something like the calm before the craziness. And this morning I was reading my Bible--I've been in 1 Kings--and came across this (17:2-6):
"Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah: 'Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. You will drink from the brook, and I have directed the ravens to supply you with food there.' So he did what the LORD had told him. He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan, and stayed there. The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook."
Pretty fitting, no? Our God surely provides. When we got the news Saturday morning, I don't know what it is but I felt really relieved. It's a good reminder that there are bigger things at work here than I can see.
And this is how these last stressful few days ended:
One of the campfire games the last night of our summer camp was called Judgment. They hide you away from the fire, bring you out and then the judge asks you some questions to decide whether you get to go to heaven or you're thrown into the flames. Yeah, sounds kind of terrifying, a little questionable, but it's actually a blast. Especially the ending, which I cannot tell you. You'll have to play for yourself. So the students and I had ourselves a bonding moment that night: when it was my turn I ended up being coerced into admitting that I stole a Snickers when I was seven.
Photographic evidence of a beautiful, hysterical night:
