reverse reverse

And so my day ended.

I laid down knowing that I would awake to snow like someone careless with powdered sugar on the mountaintops.

Just then, a slobbery gust of wind and rain blew the curtains away from the teahouse door immediately signifying that the brief visit had come to an end. We declared our joy at getting to see each other, our promises of later visits, and dashed out and then off into the sheets of rain our separate ways.

The cold and nearly empty thermos of sweet tea was content to take up room on the small table as she whispered to me about her family. Her aging parents still doing all the farm work, her monk brothers who were professional idol and incense makers, her sister's five children, her younger head strong brother, all know whom she has believed and all in her tender though loaded words: disagree. She brushed a slightly greasy strand of hair away from her symmetrically almond shaped eyes and nervously twisted a ring on her finger... it's difficult she only just mouthed. I squeezed her hand. There was nothing else I could think to do.

She had sent a message saying she was across the street, I had sent a message begging for any other time to see her, then immediately changed my mind, laid my work aside, slid back into my well worn shoes, and out the door once again but this time on an invaluable mission to visit a dear sister who I hadn't seen since last term. And the joy to which I was met with upon entering the teahouse where she waited for me made even putting the dirty socks on again worth it. So we went about the business of chatting over tea.

Finally, a moment, after a long, nearly continuously interrupted day to just breathe and finish the odd scraps of lesson planning that needed to happen for next week. But it was only a moment... the phone is going to go on strike after what it's been through today.

Even my weariness couldn't quell my urge to stop. Secretly I had always wanted to have the opportunity that lay before me on the uneven sidewalk in the dimming light as the cool breeze sliced my fingers and swirled the crowds of dirt lined against the curb. There was another student perched on a stool playing a serious game of Chinese chess with two grizzled and even more serious old men. A chance of a lifetime for a foreign teacher who walks by serious games of chess like it's her job with a longing to stop and watch or play but possessed only of a debilitating ignorance. Which promptly fled in sight of my student. He promised, between serious moves that involved a lot of grunting from the old men, to teach me how to play... leaving the doors swinging open on their hinges for future sidewalk games. Pleased and quite finished, I went back to the apartment.

So I found myself racing to the school gate only four and a half minutes late for a dinner meeting that had been arranged on the fly. I have always been able to distinguish this tiny student of mine from all the others at a distance simply by the way she wraps her long black hair behind her head in a bun. We walked through the cool breeze to a hole of a Chinese restaurant as she told me about her teaching job, about how she misses Lhasa, some questions of English letter writing, her family... a conversation continued over too much food and bursts of laughter more genuine than anything coming out of the blaring television set in the corner. Afterwards, I saw her to her bus then turned once again to head back to that place I had woken up in what seemed now like nearly a century ago.

We walked back together to where I could catch a bus and the idiotic phone rang and meetings were canceled and new ones were made and flies buzzed over a heap of trash nearby. She looked at me: teacher, then we go back to my house together? And I couldn't do anything but smile and hug fiercely this girl who after spending nearly five straight hours with me would so so gently request more. So gently in fact that it took every ounce of restraint left in me not to just agree and spend the rest of my life in that small room in the intestinal alleys of Lhasa. But it wasn't to be, and there wasn't a moment to lose before meeting another student for dinner.

On the roof the sun was warm nearly blistering and it was obvious by the fact that she had brought her dictionary with her that she had many things on her mind. So she looped around and around, words like birds dipping through the air, as we squatted on the dusty rooftop. She arranged her fears and doubts in circles around us and I dutifully followed the swirls; picking the fears up and presenting opportunities, dusting the doubts off and displaying strengths. We were interrupted by wild giggles in the alley below and we couldn't resist peering over the wall to watch as a group of children turned some plastic baskets into race cars. Race cars that we dodged a few moments later as I left to find the remainder of the day.

Past a pile of pink and purple plastic pails I turned left into an alley and left again into a house that had begun to feel more like a home to me after my countless visits over the last year. Delighted to find my ever cheery, slightly freckled student at the top of the stairs we began what would be just another day together. She slid her glasses up on her nose with her middle finger and flipped her tidy black braid over her shoulder and together we set about the work of washing, cutting, peeling, frying, boiling our lunch of vegetables over rice and sweet milk tea. The cracked mirror hanging on one wall reflected back the chatter of the next door neighbor grandmother as she stared and commented on how big my body was, reflected back the foggy Tibetan lessons, reflected back dozens of text messages and phone calls from what felt a little like everyone in the city, reflected back the stacks of bottles and books and clutter that filled the tiny room. The mirror had seen enough. My sweet student and I headed up to the roof.

The clouds hung like a thousand gossamer veils over the mountains. Cold. I racked my brain for any excuse I could think of that would be valid enough to keep me in bed the rest of the rainy morning... but instead of a reason I got a text message and my day began....

No, today doesn't really make any more sense in reverse.