I grew up with wide open spaces, coming and going, some of my most vivid memories in transit. Looking out car windows, airplane windows, train windows. Still to this day, every time I fly, I press my forehead against the glass, listen to my favorite music, and almost always cry. Nothing exists 30,000 feet up, it's all blank sky and blurry green, blue, brown earth. All going towards something and leaving something (and always someones) in the disappearing horizon. A literal in between of spaces and even time.
I remember watching for border lines as a small child. Where did this country end and the next begin? It boggled my mind when I couldn't see them. Location was such an essence of human communication: where are you from? Where are you going? Where do you live? But through few square inches of opaque plastic, none of that seemed to really matter.
We fragment the Earth, staking places, giving her names, drawing our identities. She blends, smudges lines, scarred by our enforcement of our boundaries, and still always crossing them with her life and beauty.
As many of you know, our family lived for a year in Kenya in 2012. We moved there truly believing we would raise our family there, just the way I had been. But it wasn't meant to be, for a variety of reasons (which you can find digging back in the archives of this blog).
Living in Seattle has been an immensely important season for us, and one we are so excited to continue. We love the Northwest, we love our friends, our home, our neighbors. We love what we do each day and who we do it with. We have grown into adulthood here, wiser, more content, more sure of who we are and what we want our days to consist of.
But living here has been a daily acceptance of a loss as well. No matter how perfectly Seattle fits us, it remains incapable of filling the part of me that will always belong from somewhere else. Certain times are harder, when the weather and daylight hours are almost the same as Nairobi's, when there is a smoky smell in the night sky that floods me with memories of Limuru and Kawai, when someone asks, "where are you from?" and their eyebrows always raise when I say, "I grew up in Kenya and now I live here."
So many times I've heard people say something along the lines of "we'd do something different, but we're just stuck. It's too late for us now."
And so, as we've put roots down here, and truly relished in the constancy and belonging that only comes with time, we've also kept one eye to the door: how do we make sure we don't get stuck?
And so, about 9 months ago, when I saw a wide open window on my grad school schedule that coincided with the kids summer break, I approached my handsome husband (guys, seriously, he's like a fine wine...better and better with age). "I have an idea...I think we need to go somewhere overseas for at least 12 weeks."
The idea has morphed over time, and it's taken a lot of scrappy thinking, and at least a dozen things out of our control falling into place, but it's finally come together. And here it is: from early July to early September, we will travel through Costa Rica, Colombia, and Peru. The hubby will work in each country for a couple weeks, collaborating with local partners and working remotely on larger projects. The kids and I will spend that time exploring, enjoying one another between two very full grad school years, and learning Spanish. I'll also continue to develop a research proposal I'm working on, and continue working my Beautycounter business and running our Airbnb from a distance (words cannot express how thankful we are for my flexible income sources; we truly couldn't do this trip without them).
We'll get about a week to vacation in each country, and will do a variety of things, including meeting up with friends in Costa Rica, visiting Machu Picchu in Peru, and going to the coffee belt in Colombia. We'll stay in Airbnbs, hotels, bed and breakfasts, and maybe even a hostel or two.
Why are we doing this? Because we want our kids to know this one simple thing: the whole world is a viable place to work, to live, to love.
In a hundred years from now, our borders will have done one of two things: fortified and caused deeper scarring, or blurred even more as we finally embrace with our Earth already knows - we are all part of one sacred thing: life.
And so we're off. To show that blurred life to our children, to learn from it ourselves, to do our small part in making it more whole, peaceful, and equitable.
Is some part of me scared? oh absolutely. Is there risk involved in what we're doing? you bet. Have I cried over this trip yet? Nope, but I sure will.
But we've never once wondered: should we really do this?
Fear is worth facing. Risks are worth taking. Tears are worth crying.
This trip has not come together easily: there have been so many conversations, going back to the drawing board over and over, thinking it wouldn't happen, canceling reservations, spreadsheets upon spreadsheets, phone calls to teachers, doctors, principles.
But we never let go of the dream when we hit an obstacle. Because we know one simple family value we hold, and one we'll pass down to our kids as best as we can:
the world is worth seeing. people are worth knowing. dreams are worth pursing.
I hope it's contagious. I hope our trip inspires you. I hope you see it and catch the thought that says, "no way we could do something like that." and I hope you turn that no into a different kind of yes. It might look totally different than what we're doing. But I hope you take risks, I hope you dream big dreams, I hope you blur lines.
Because I know, from 30,000 feet up, sometime over the past 30 years, I've flown over you, my face pressed up against the window. And do you know what I saw? You. Making up the blue, green, brown blur of Earth. You. Borderless, beautiful, full of possibility. You. making the whole world a place to work. to live. to love.
I remember watching for border lines as a small child. Where did this country end and the next begin? It boggled my mind when I couldn't see them. Location was such an essence of human communication: where are you from? Where are you going? Where do you live? But through few square inches of opaque plastic, none of that seemed to really matter.
We fragment the Earth, staking places, giving her names, drawing our identities. She blends, smudges lines, scarred by our enforcement of our boundaries, and still always crossing them with her life and beauty.
As many of you know, our family lived for a year in Kenya in 2012. We moved there truly believing we would raise our family there, just the way I had been. But it wasn't meant to be, for a variety of reasons (which you can find digging back in the archives of this blog).
Living in Seattle has been an immensely important season for us, and one we are so excited to continue. We love the Northwest, we love our friends, our home, our neighbors. We love what we do each day and who we do it with. We have grown into adulthood here, wiser, more content, more sure of who we are and what we want our days to consist of.
But living here has been a daily acceptance of a loss as well. No matter how perfectly Seattle fits us, it remains incapable of filling the part of me that will always belong from somewhere else. Certain times are harder, when the weather and daylight hours are almost the same as Nairobi's, when there is a smoky smell in the night sky that floods me with memories of Limuru and Kawai, when someone asks, "where are you from?" and their eyebrows always raise when I say, "I grew up in Kenya and now I live here."
So many times I've heard people say something along the lines of "we'd do something different, but we're just stuck. It's too late for us now."
And so, as we've put roots down here, and truly relished in the constancy and belonging that only comes with time, we've also kept one eye to the door: how do we make sure we don't get stuck?
And so, about 9 months ago, when I saw a wide open window on my grad school schedule that coincided with the kids summer break, I approached my handsome husband (guys, seriously, he's like a fine wine...better and better with age). "I have an idea...I think we need to go somewhere overseas for at least 12 weeks."
The idea has morphed over time, and it's taken a lot of scrappy thinking, and at least a dozen things out of our control falling into place, but it's finally come together. And here it is: from early July to early September, we will travel through Costa Rica, Colombia, and Peru. The hubby will work in each country for a couple weeks, collaborating with local partners and working remotely on larger projects. The kids and I will spend that time exploring, enjoying one another between two very full grad school years, and learning Spanish. I'll also continue to develop a research proposal I'm working on, and continue working my Beautycounter business and running our Airbnb from a distance (words cannot express how thankful we are for my flexible income sources; we truly couldn't do this trip without them).
We'll get about a week to vacation in each country, and will do a variety of things, including meeting up with friends in Costa Rica, visiting Machu Picchu in Peru, and going to the coffee belt in Colombia. We'll stay in Airbnbs, hotels, bed and breakfasts, and maybe even a hostel or two.
Why are we doing this? Because we want our kids to know this one simple thing: the whole world is a viable place to work, to live, to love.
In a hundred years from now, our borders will have done one of two things: fortified and caused deeper scarring, or blurred even more as we finally embrace with our Earth already knows - we are all part of one sacred thing: life.
And so we're off. To show that blurred life to our children, to learn from it ourselves, to do our small part in making it more whole, peaceful, and equitable.
Is some part of me scared? oh absolutely. Is there risk involved in what we're doing? you bet. Have I cried over this trip yet? Nope, but I sure will.
But we've never once wondered: should we really do this?
Fear is worth facing. Risks are worth taking. Tears are worth crying.
This trip has not come together easily: there have been so many conversations, going back to the drawing board over and over, thinking it wouldn't happen, canceling reservations, spreadsheets upon spreadsheets, phone calls to teachers, doctors, principles.
But we never let go of the dream when we hit an obstacle. Because we know one simple family value we hold, and one we'll pass down to our kids as best as we can:
the world is worth seeing. people are worth knowing. dreams are worth pursing.
I hope it's contagious. I hope our trip inspires you. I hope you see it and catch the thought that says, "no way we could do something like that." and I hope you turn that no into a different kind of yes. It might look totally different than what we're doing. But I hope you take risks, I hope you dream big dreams, I hope you blur lines.
Because I know, from 30,000 feet up, sometime over the past 30 years, I've flown over you, my face pressed up against the window. And do you know what I saw? You. Making up the blue, green, brown blur of Earth. You. Borderless, beautiful, full of possibility. You. making the whole world a place to work. to live. to love.
No comments:
Post a Comment