The ends...

In English we talk about frayed ends and loose ends. We talk about them as if they were broken, or we need to tie them up, or they ought not to be that way. But the truth is, that's the way that all ends are... and there's nothing we can do about it.

*** *** ***

It had been raining. Rain made the sky low and the earth seem fresh. I walked through a mist up to meet my friend at the nearest monastery. The uneven street up to the gate was slick with moisture and my friend stood in his deep red robes waiting for me in front of a tea house. We got cups which were filled by a grinning man with a dented kettle. As we sat chatting, the rain played a song that only it can sing on the roof and ground around us. The mountains were velvety green in the misty dampness and the monk reasoned Lhasa wants you to remember it beautiful so that you will come back quickly. Another monk friend joined us and we moved to a bench under a tree to eat lunch. Rain drops splashed in my cup and reminded me of all the tears I couldn't cry. My first tea in the rain and my last tea with monks.

The nunnery had been recently painted and I breathed deep in the cool air and stopped often to admire the purple flowers like jewels scattered on the ground amidst yellow flowers like flames licking up from the rocks as I walked up the mountain towards it. I made a phone call and my friend came out wearing a towel over her closely shaved head. The city looked like a sleepy child waking up in the cool morning and I sat in a room occupied only by statues of idols as my friends came and went and held my hand and laughed with me and handed me small gifts. Leaving them to the busy work of cooking for the rest of the nuns was a little bit like walking away from a bustling and familiar home scene. My first time sharing a nun's tsampa bowl and my last entirely Tibetan conversation.

I and two Chinese students sat around a too small table in a too new Chinese tea shop trying to suck our too chunky tea up wide straws and laughing about the way that the chairs were too small and made us feel fat. The shop was really just a counter with a table and chairs available mostly for decoration as sitting at it nearly forced us out the door and onto the sidewalk outside for lack of room. I stared past my students out into the blue Lhasa sky onto the dirty, periodically, crowded Lhasa street. Suddenly, a small Chinese boy appeared in the door with a little baseball cape cockled on his head. He stared at me and with hand raised he moved as if drawn to our table and left his hand suspended in the air until I instinctively shook it. Then he grinned and disappeared. When we got back to the school my students asked me if I would give them each a hug. My first small child handshake, but my last Chinese milk tea.

Recovery from a night and a day of vomiting horrors was slow and time was exactly what I didn't have. I delayed a dinner with a quirky neighbor for a day and then we went out with a group, greeting my mostly empty stomach with a tray of chicken buried amidst kilos of spice. The rain poured down around the outdoor eating area where we spat chicken bones on the floor and decided to accompany my neighbor to his room for tea later. As the hour drew late and I emptied my tiny glass cup for the last time making it quite certain that I wouldn't sleep well later, my neighbor picked up his electronic dictionary up and handed it to me. I want to tell you this he said. Yi luo ping an was the entry: have a good journey. My first dinner at an outdoor restaurant overlooking the Potala and my last interaction with an odd man transformed into a trusted friend.

I went to her room because I had been to her room nearly once a week for years. It was exactly the same as it always was and she perched on the nearly shredded stool exactly the same girl she always had been. We made sha momos that were exquisitely delicious in their simplicity and familiarity and words spilled from her slightly quivering lips. It was as if she felt compelled to tell me all of the story of her life thus far lived in order to impress upon me the weight of my entrance into it. Your hair is different, and your eyes and skin, but my heart thinks you are the same to me, as my sister she confessed. Something caught in my throat and I could only hope that my eyes could speak everything that my mouth failed to in that moment. My first compliment of such tender depth and sincerity and my last sha momos.

Immediately upon meeting her on a busy street corner she grabbed my hand and led me around the slanted and bustling allies of Lhasa running errands in a last minute rush that demanded our tea be slow and untroubled. We arrived in a tea house and ordered a thermos as though there was nothing different or final about this day. The owner sat down on a bench next to us and suddenly the entire room wanted to know everything about me. When they learned that indeed my hours left in Lhasa were numbered the owner said Don't leave with enough force that perhaps the words would generate reality from the very act of speaking them. They only managed to make my friend and I blink back tears which appeared quite suddenly to both of us. She rubbed my finger as we waited at the bus stop and watched my face slide away from hers as the bus jerked away. My first time seeing tears in her eyes and my last Tibetan tea.

I had begged for sleep. Instead I got dreams. Upon waking to my last morning on my mat which had been my bed for three years to a sky that has become like a confidant and friend to me the only thing that was sure was the clarity of the voice in my dreams which had commanded me to read in the Psalms. I sat up and opened my Book to the first section of Psalms I randomly came to. Psalm 65. Praise is rightfully yours. My first easy breath in days and the last scripture I read underneath that sky.

I sat alone in an empty apartment and felt only slightly sick to my stomach from travel anxiety. A knock at the door. Then an entire class, which I had first thought troubled beyond reaching turned dear, filed into the apartment. We sat and stood around in silence, then one student took my hand. Really we thank you teacher and we love you. My head bowed and silent hot tears filled my lap, filled the room, and the only sound was thirty two sets of damp eyes and heaving chests. My first time seeing all of the students of that class together that semester and my last.

Another knock on the same door and a different small group of students filed into my apartment empty of all except a growing pile of kadas. They wept with me, they sang to me, they laughed with me, they sat with me waiting for the car. In Tibetan we say that tears hold all the words that our hearts can't speak said one. I nodded and tears made rivers down my face. One girl stood up, thank you teacher she said as she slipped a ring off of her own finger and onto my trembling one, she usually wears this one, the other girls affirmed. Into the room walked two Tibetan teachers, one who had been like a father to me this whole time bearing kadas and gifts that only made the tears hotter and deeper. Think of seeing your mother and father said the teacher as he held my damp face and please be happy. My first gift from one finger to another and my last time weeping on the shoulder of this father figure.

Outside students were milling about in teary groups and teachers stood solemnly next to each other and we waited for the car and wept quietly. When it came roaring around the corner, the tears came harder and mouths opened to speak and instead only moaned. My students rushed toward me, one who was particularly close to me who had remained relatively composed until this moment rushed throwing her arms around my waist and laying her head on my shoulder to sob convulsively and I became sure that dying couldn't feel worse. Handshakes from teachers I could see only through a waterfall of tears and hugs and kadas and tears and I was gasping for a breath that wasn't damp from inside the car. My first time holding broken students and my last time offering any kind of consolation whatsoever.

The car made a quick stop at the gate and the sweet old gate grandfather who had forced me to sip his home brewed barley beer at new years, a request I had submitted to only because he is my friend, ran out calling my name. He flung the car door open and I leaned forward tears lashing my lap and hands as he reached in to present me with a kada. My first gift from him and my last time to look deep into his discolored, aging eyes.

I sat in the car heading dizzingly quick towards the airport with three Tibetan teachers who had become like sisters to me. We held hands and laughed about memories and watched the Lhasa river float lazily by the window. I believe we will meet again I believe it, I feel and I believe it was the chorus of our trip until my eyes became painful with dry redness and puffy from emptiness. At the airport we dragged one hundred pounds of luggage over to the check in and found out that I would be charged for half of it. Nothing could be done, no excuses were good enough, no amount of begging compelling enough. We walked over to the cashier counter who calculated the bill. As I threw bills onto the counter the cashier looked hard at the ticket. Nevermind she said this plane is big enough to handle the extra bag, you don't need to pay. My first free luggage and my last moments with dear friends.

The flight out was perfectly on time and boarding had never been less stressful. I leaned my throbbing head and heaving heart against the plane window and winced as it left the tarmac. The mountains just underneath the plane were painted in a thousand beautiful patterns and colors, green and brown and purple and orange and white and I gasped at the beauty of this place that seemed to be somehow more vibrant, more brilliant in this, my last vision, of it. My first time to see the mountains with such a clarity of their awesomeness and my last glimpses of a place that had wounded and taught me repeatedly for three years.

These are my ends. They are loose and frayed. There is no fixing them and no tying them up. That's the way all ends are.

Good-bye Lhasa, until another time... if hopes and tears add up to anything substantial at all.

Did you get the message?

My last text messages from Lhasa...

Ok, don't be sad, I know, we will can meet, you need take care of your body! Jigme and me never forget you!

Surely I will contact you! yeah, I am sorry not to see you off at the airport. It is a pity! and it is lucky not to go for I am afraid I can not control myself. I am moved by the students. We will miss you. No one talk to me in the office. No one will enjoy tea in Mr. Liu's.

Where are you?

Ok, hope everything goes well~best wishes, my forever friend~

I already miss you.

Teacher: Good luck. Have a good and successful future. I will miss you. God bless you.

Dear Kelly, I know you will leave for America. But I can't meet you. I thank you for you are my teacher. I'm glad. You will go back. I must miss you. I will send message for you usually in the future.

Do you remember we are first meet at beside our school door and conversations I will don't forget forever. I hope you will keep touch in me and take care of yourself.

Dear Teacher (Kelly) what a pity you are leaved our. I don't know you are leaved our today, I feel very sad because I love you very much and I will miss you! good luck to you!

I hope make laugh with you forever! Goodbye my best teacher!

Ms. Kelly I am so sorry. because you are about to walk tomorrow. I shall miss you. Wish you a pleasant journey.

Ms. Kelly. I will go on writing poems. I believe we can meet again. although you will go back. a friendship between you and us.

Ok, I wait for seeing you in Tibet again someday.

Damp things...

It's raining again and the ground will be mushy tomorrow but that's not what I mean.

I sat on a broken chair at the front of the classroom on my last day inside it and asked the Father of grace to surround my students and bring them safely to His side while they poured over their books and notes searching for answers for their open book exam. I blinked hard and the knowledge that this might be the last time I see them all together became a damp thought threatening to spill over my face. I turned to the painful brightness of the sky outside and breathed slowly letting the dampness sink into my stomach.

Sometimes they, my colleagues in the office and around campus, look at me too hard and I can't look back lest I be overcome with thoughts too damp to hold inside.

I had lunch with a student and tea and sadness sloshed around in my stomach and stayed right there because when she asked about one more time together I knew it would be so. Only when our eyes met did they glisten with some damp thing.

There was no chair for me in the last classroom in Lhasa I will ever be in, so I stood. I stood behind the desk I've stood behind nearly every week for three years and looked out on a roomful of students that taught me how difficult love is. I asked the Father of mercy to continue in His patience with them until they are brought safely to His side. I told Him that the next room I wanted to see them in all together again was His throne room. Dampness made my face heavy and weighed on my chest.

As each student finished their exam I took it and handed them a good-bye letter and a photo. One student, in the front sitting alone put her head on her desk and let the dampness run down her face and cause her eyes to redden. I squeezed my fingers, hoping that my damp thoughts would pool up there instead.

After class, a roomful of students made slow and silent with so many damp things walked out to the football field. They handed me a gift of handmade, beautiful Tibetan shoes that I have often seen on the feet of nomads and envied, which only fit when I'm not wearing socks. They took turns and heaped forty kadas around my neck. By the time they had finished whispering their wishes and gratitude to me it was my cold hands that had to stuff all my dampness back into my eyes.

I went to dinner with two girls who had been my students until this semester and who are consistently brave enough to overcome their entire culture's worth of shyness to speak to me. We went to the teahouse we always go to because we know the owner and he's funny. We ordered the same thermos of tea and three bowls of noodles we always order because it's delicious and the predictability is comfortable. We sat down at a dented ma jong table in the quiet tiny room, just the size for three, upstairs. The tea came and they pulled out their gifts: incense, jewelry for my family, a jar filled with paper stars, a purse...


Oh these are very perfect, I gushed, I'm so happy to have them, I assured, I will take them back to America and remember, I cracked.

The world became watery. Dampness can blur even the hardest of crumbly teahouse walls.

A teacher and two students sat at a dented ma jong table and didn't look at each other because the table was slowly becoming stained with splotches of dampness, damp drops splashed in our tea, tissues were turned into fortresses which melted in the damp. When the student sitting across from me put her head on the table and sobbed openly, in a way that is uniquely not at all Tibetan, all my hot damp thoughts from the day ran down my face like streams. Our meal was eaten through sniffles and seen through eyes of glass.

This is my last week in Lhasa. All my things are damp.

Boundless trustworthiness

If you had been standing under my window this morning and heard on the breeze a girl's voice demanding that a new song be sung by all the earth it would have been because the Spirit told me that today, my tenth day left in Lhasa, would be a psalm 96 day.

Some days I wake up and read something and I don't know why but I have to read it again... and then once again...

And in my mind these words stick and I know my Father's trustworthiness is uniquely boundless, and then I have confirmation days that go like this...

I delivered a plant to a bare little office inhabited by an awkward Chinese man before class and the timing was perfect because we got to have a long chat despite the minor interruption of being given a gift from the Language department chairman who considers himself my father. 

I had exactly seven minutes before my last class of the year to go down the hall to another office to pick up my exam copies from some friends who had nearly made me lose it in tears at the banquet the night before. 

I was shocked to see more than thirty students in a class that had been averaging around twenty and was blessed that they all seemed to want to be a part of a class picture outside on the football field not an hour later. 

I went to lunch with four students who I needed to have one last lunch with to give them a small graduation gift and I know the lunch was meant to be because until the food arrived none of us could look at each other because we were all trying not to cry. 

I got a phone call and described the situation to the students I was with who gladly finished quickly and helped me give a book bag of goodies to my beggar children, which was certainly an ordained moment because His goodness and plenty were given witness. 

I climbed the crumbly stairs to my apartment and thought about calling my endearingly odd neighbor about when this weekend we could have a last dinner and right as I did that my phone rang and it was him. Come to my house he said. 

I went to his room and we found a good time for our dinner and he revealed that this dinner wasn't actually his invitation but another friend's who wanted to have dinner with me. Then why didn't you invite me? I inquired, because I want to have a lunch with you another day he laughed of course all the same people will be there. 

I rested for a moment in this soon no longer mine apartment and praised my Father who makes all things good and thanked His Spirit which had so obviously guided every single minute of the day thus far. 

I marched into a nearly completely full afternoon class and knew that the students were far more concerned with taking a class picture than reviewing for their exam and so we went outside and took care of that. Moments were sweet as students asked me to come visit their family once more, stand here for a picture, and can all our classroom boys take one together with you? 

I took one last picture with our gate grandfather to his delight and walked arm and arm with a student who I wish for all the world I could just take with me. 

I waited in my apartment for a former student to arrive and take my last plant home with him. He came, flopped down on the couch, and bemoaned the empty room shaking his head I can't believe you are leaving. He drank a cup of water and said I have a gift for you, but I wouldn't bring it because I didn't want this to be our last  time to meet. 

I walked with him back out to the school gate to wait for some teachers that needed to take me out to dinner. As we sat in the taxi one who has become a dear friend of mine leaned into me and whispered, I think all of the English teachers will see you to the airport, I am going to arrange for the school to send a bus.

I ate dinner with them and ran into a random friend and we walked around an island arm in arm as the wind cooled our overheated, overfull bodies and I couldn't help but comment again and again at how green all the mountains were this year.

Could it be that the mountains are green and the breeze cool and the day  perfectly timed because it all heard me this morning saying again and again...

Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice; let the sea and all that fills it resound. Let the fields and everything in the exult. Then all the trees of the forest will shout for joy before Him, for He is coming.

And days like today are evidence that the heavens, the earth, the sea, the fields, the trees, and I do all that... and I can be sure that His proimse to return is found sure somewhere in the depth of His boundless trustworthiness that revealed itself to me today.

He is coming, back.

and I trust Him.

A love story.

This is a story of love.

It began with pain; a bruise on the leg of a beggar child after he was kicked by a passing student.

It was breathed into being by grubby hand prints, and hungry faces. It was nurtured by a single persistent request for money and confusion in watery child eyes when people ran away from her filthy presence. It was birthed when the children revealed their names, their family, their simply childishness, their desire for some milk more than money.

This love story grew up in poverty and grime. It dragged cardboard boxes around in the streets and didn't wear socks and one time lost all of their shoes in the stinking ditch near the school gate. It broke their skin, cracked their noses, chapped their faces, tore their fingers, and one time left open pussy wounds all over the face of the smallest one. This love story only grew stronger and went out looking for the children to clean them, washing their faces and skinny arms up to their shoulders, and nurse them back to relative health.

It grew, not in time, but rather in packages of chicken which were bought consistently every time the children appeared. The love story started to include not just the beggars but the shopkeepers, students, and even people in another hemisphere. It matured until the beggars became claimed and watched for and packages were sent on their behalf and a grand plan to celebrate this love story was hatched and they asked students and learned the name of the pale one they used to believe was called 'Hello'.

Ms. Killy, when will you go to your hometown? they asked one day in a surprising change from their normal question which was can we buy something to eat?  

And then they disappeared. For more than a week there were no children.

This story of love became a story of agony as a book bag, bought by a friend who heard the story and became part of it, filled with stuffed animals, coloring, books, and socks from America, as well as toothbrushes, snacks, tissues from here, sat getting dusty in a quickly emptying apartment. The police are collecting the beggars and sending them away this month, another friend sadly considered and the love story became frantic.

Love reaches entirely new levels when it can do nothing more than return to the source of its perfection.

************************************

A phone call: Ms. Kelly, the beggars are here! They came back! They are at the school gate! I will tell them to wait for you!

A teacher and three students quickly finished lunch, dashed to the school gate, scooped up the two smallest beggars as the oldest road a rusty bike that was at least ten sizes too large for him behind them.

A book bag bulging with things was ushered down from an apartment to a quiet place in the shade behind the building, right into the arms of the slightly confused, though happy, children.

A threesome of students unzipped the bag which the children didn't know what to do with and started to unload its contents on the grass for the wide-eyed, silent, dusty children to observe.

A tear, then two, then many ran down the faces of the students as they saw all that had been given. The children tilted their heads in disbelief until a stuffed monkey was drawn from the bag and the smallest one started giggling.

A love story was celebrated by three little ones, the very picture of every poor little one that the Son of perfect Love loves, shuffled down a broken, dirty sidewalk balancing a too large bike between them carrying a book bag filled with more than they had ever owned.


Ms. Kelly, today I am very moved. I know you really love those beggars. I... I want to be like you... I think you are like god declared one, rather choked up, student.


Now I will tell you which god I'm like...

And a new love story flinched with its first signs of life.

Don't go... and other things I heard today.

"You are thinking too much, this is bad for your heart."

"Without you I don't want to think, I will be so bored and miss you always."

"Teacher, we never forget you."

"We will all miss you."

"I... I can't say."

"This isn't beer, it's tears... I have many words to say but only remember this: take care of yourself."

"Tell your father thank you thank you."

"Kelly, oh Kelly it will be okay, only be happy now."

"Teacher, what size shoe do you wear?"

"She has been our teacher for three years what does the price matter?"

"You should go back to America, get married, have a baby, and then my heart is so happy."

"When Kelly came to the school my English got so much better, she is my friend."

"What I admire most about you is that, in three years, you never complained. You give me a good impression of foreigners."

"If you ever have opportunity to return you must take it."

"Oh I will miss you SO much."

*********************

"Don't go."

The fittings

We will eat quickly, she said, then I want you to try on a Tibetan Chuba.

When Tibetan friends get that tone in their voice it would be vanity to refuse. So I stretched on the rickety bench, grabbed another cabbage dumpling with my chopsticks and eyed the flies bouncing lazily into the sheer sheet wrapped around the otherwise open nunnery tea house.

She had just bought a new, very pink, sun hat which her boyfriend now held on his knee. Do you like this hat? I asked him. This one eh? he asked back, then, in Tibetan, it looks like she picked it up from the ground. She glared at him while I nearly choked with laugher and tea.

We ate quickly.

Let's go, she said, arranging her picked up off the ground hat neatly on her head, but first I want you to see something. I sighed as we three darted down an alley towards what I knew was a temple which I was tired of having to see. But when we arrived, instead of golden colored idols sitting in rows, she pointed out to me pots of flowers. It's a beautiful garden, I know you like flowers, she said. I beamed with delight and freedom.

We ended up wandering around the alleys of downtown Lhasa, in and out of Tibetan clothing shops as she bemoaned the fact that they only sold grandmother cloth. We arrived at a shop the size of a closet and she let go of my elbow and said here, now you must choose a color you like. 

A ream of turquoise cloth later and a coral colored shirt to match and she was satisfied only once the addition of a striped apron made the ensemble complete. As I stood being awkwardly measured by a small Tibetan girl, who continually commented on the good shape of my body, my friend's boyfriend paced a little staring at his sandals. I think the colors are very perfect, he said.

It's so special they agreed, and we arranged to pick it up a few days later.

****************************************

First we we shop for a surprise, my colleague said, then have lunch.

When Tibetan friends get that tone in their voice it would be vanity to refuse. So I and two colleagues got on a bus on a too hot afternoon and I cradled a jar of ice water on my knees. We got off the bus and again entered the labyrinth of downtown Lhasa alleys, occasionally scraping someone with the edge of our umbrellas, only to end up in a small shop roughly the size of a closet filled with cloth and a small woman with a tape measure around her neck. I smiled. Surprise! they said.


Pick a good color they said and we rummaged through a stack of cloth in dozens of different patterns and colors. This time I chose a purpleish maroon one with some gold details and my friends bubbled with delight. Now for the shirt, and they dragged me two steps to the other wall of the shop. Before I even had a chance to survey the options one colleague had decided for me on a white sheer shirt with blots like oil spills all over it. So beautiful! they said nodding eagerly.

The woman with the tape measure put me in the shirt and threw the ream of cloth over my shoulder. A Tibetan grandfather spinning a rusty looking wheel tilted his hat back as he rested in the shade of the shop and surveyed the goings on. When I made eye contact with him he gave me a toothless grin and a thumbs up. Is it beautiful? I asked him. So beautiful, he said and shuffled away.

As I stood with my arms out, once again being awkwardly measured while the woman commented on the shape of my body my friends nodded in silent approval. We thought a long time about this surprise they said and asked the woman to choose a striped apron to complete the ensemble.

It's so special, they agreed and we arranged to pick it up a few days later.

We ate a uniquely Tibetan lunch of luhbi, fried potatoes, patsuhmogu, loco momo's and a Tibetan rendition of a samosa. As we sat chatting and picking through our odd assortment of plastic bags of food in a restaurant that was so narrow one could almost reach the opposite wall from where you sat, I considered my two recent fittings...

Until this past week, I have never had the experience of being fitted for anything that was made just for me as a gift. Now, I've had it twice.

And I agree wholeheartedly with my friends: it's so special.

Sunflower Seeds

It's as if I'm seeing everything in these last two weeks in Lhasa through glasses that have the opposite of their intended effect and blur things. A tint of something sad shades nearly every moment and little weights attach themselves to my words so that they sometimes, unexpectedly, stick in my throat. Though my walls are almost bare I can still see the places where the pictures had hung.

I have not yet dusted off the suitcases. 

***********************************************

I walked into my student's relatives house only to be greeted by an ensemble of Tibetans that looked as though they might have walked right off the plateu away from their yak herds not an hour before. I sat next to one smiling woman who grabbed my hand and leaned towards me, in a moment of mutual vulnerability, to tap my forehead with hers. There is something about an embrace of foreheads that is uniquely endearing and I vowed to do it more often.

As I and she and a small group of her relatives piled into the car another woman leaned in the window and grabbed my hand drawing it teary-eyed to her forehead. She is sad because this is only her first time to see you and you will leave soon my student offered as an explanation. All the people I only met once flitted through my mind like ghosts of butterflies.

When we arrived at her small village in the middle of gentle looking mountain ridges and fields so green they made your mouth water we filed out of the car and into the kitchen where her mother, an older rendition of my student, stood pouring fresh, warm milk into small bowls. I would later meet the cows.

My first moment in the kitchen time stood still. Her mother's eyes watered over and she pinched her mouth shut and the look that she gave me tried to speak, speak ten thousand beautiful things, that I couldn't understand. It was as if all of the stories her daughter had likely told her about me just materialized in front of her and she couldn't decide if I were real.

When her brother bounded into the kitchen moments later and caught sight of me, he leaped backward out of the room in a nervous giggle. It would take the rest of the day as he, like a nervous animal, would watch me from a distance and alternately come too close to me and then dart away before he decided I was, relatively, safe.

We walked around the garden, ate too much bread, drank milk that tasted like every good thing I had forgotten, or never known, that milk should taste like, swished flies away, watched her mother work the loom, laughed and took pictures. It felt so natural, normal, peaceful, to be just a part of a family again, even a family unlike any I have ever been a part of. Her mother disappeared for a moment and came back with a bundle of cloth.

My mother worked very hard to make this for you. Try it on. Does it fit? She had never seen you so she only guessed. This takes a long time to make. I think it fits well. Never wash it with water. Do you like it? 

And I found myself in a Tibetan jacket made just for me which smelled exactly like the sheep's back they sheared the wool from. And I took up the mother's dye stained, calloused hands in my own and I couldn't look her in the eye. How could anything I've ever done deserve the amount of labor from this one jacket of infinite worth to me?

We walked down the empty nearly paved streets to the local monastery to visit her uncle, a monk of thirty years, and became the first, and likely last, foreign guest to ever visit the tiny place. Obviously proud, her uncle and his monk friends showed us every single room and we drank tea and were kadad in a room reserved for their highest teacher, should he ever return from exile and show up in the middle of the countryside for a visit. The chances are much higher that I would return. A wrinkled, grinning grandfather whose ears stuck out at odd angles neglected his endless rotations around an oversized prayer wheel for a moment.

As we piled back into the car hours later full on milk, and laughter, and sunshine, and family, my student's mother stood by the car window. I clutched the bag of jacket like a precious jewel in my lap and opened my mouth to say anything at all. And I couldn't. My words had made a swift getaway somwhere between the last drop of milk and the car. And I blinked hard several times and her mother waited, and before I could make a second attempt she patted my hand through the window and said, Zeama, it's time to go. So we left, making dust clouds in the otherwise clear and spotless day.

I leaned into my student and couldn't speak until we had arrived back in Lhasa. And I can't now remember anything I said then.

When I got home I immediately put the jacket on again. It does fit well. And I even found some sunflower seeds in the pockets like memories of too many odd things now heartbreakingly familiar...

... like all the things I can't take back with me.

This is my Tibet

The beginning of the end.

Today I hugged the grocery lady from behind. She laughed and her husband took another drag on his cigarette before smiling broadly. Then she started speaking to me in her fierce Sichuan Chinese and I called down the street to my friend begging her to come over and translate.


Before you leave for the summer, she said holding my hand tightly, make sure to come over and take whatever things you want for the trip. It was what she said to me every year, and I saddened thinking of all the fruit and vegetables and laughter and hand squeezes and smiles and even the odd meal they'd given to me free of charge over the years. Tell her that I'm sad because I don't know when I will come back, I begged my friend to translate. She did.

Then the grocery lady burst into tears. I did too.

What could we do but cry?

The timeline...

7 am: I awoke to what sounded like a bulldozer driving in circles around my bed and realized groggily that it was just a fly roughly the size of a quarter. My ears still tingled from the English-song-competition-followed-by-KTV-with-the-leaders evening of magic. My head throbbed with anger at so loud an uninvited guest at so early an hour and I wondered why flies weren't created to be silent. But the morning sky was cool.

9 am: I walked into a classroom and was shocked by more than half the students in attendance. I looked at one boy who I hadn't seen anywhere near class for over nine months, blinked hard, and he was still there.

10.37 am: I finished class three minutes early and walked outside to the quickly warming day and saw a former class of my students sitting in the shade some distance away. "God bless you Ms. Kelly" one boy yelled to my surprise and delight. Even sleep deprived, I know He has.

10.46 am: I made a cup of tea and poured it into a jar I could carry with me. I knew there was no way I would make it through the rest of the day without a cup of tea.

11 am: I sat waiting for a colleague to go oven shopping with me on a bench near our main office. A student, who has recently changed his style to looking something like Jon Travolta in Grease, came to sit on the bench with me. Normally sullen and distant he openly confesed his frustration with the job he'd been given, and his desire to take a tour guide exam, though he never removed his MP3 earbuds.

Noon: We, finally, found an oven. But we didn't buy it. Go figure.

12.45 pm: I sat around a tiny table with two Chinese colleagues eating what amounted to a Chinese rendition of what in America might have been a chicken salad. They had so wanted ranch sauce, demanded I make it for them, and so we dipped bits of vegetable and chicken into it with chopsticks to eat.

2.15 pm: Another bulldozer invaded my room and my sleep, and met with the same crushing result as the first one. I don't know how they got in without opening the door, and I can't remember the last time I was so angry.

3 pm: I tried to rub the sleep off my face as I blundered down the hall to my neighbors house to ask for help to send my last two boxes back to America. He sat drinking tea with another neighbor and the two of them laughed at my sleepy half awake condition. I leaned back into the pumpkin shaped pillow and enjoyed their company.

3:45 pm: I watched a man seal my boxes with shocking dexterity and thought: here is the only efficient man in all of China. Nearly 600 yuan later my over twenty kilos worth of things that at the moment were important to me were on their way to America.

4 pm: I leaned against a bus stop and pondered the shattering blows to my own heart as I listened to my neighbor speak of everything broken in his life and the world. It has been a long time since I have so clearly seen the result of the Fall. I wanted to weep, but paid for our bus tickets instead.

4.15 pm: I became the amusement of the bus when I surprised two middle school girls by telling them in crystal clear Tibetan that really I wasn't 'SO' beautiful.

4.55 pm: I glanced at my watch and felt sad that I had to dash out of my neighbor's house where he had been pouring me tea and continuing to chat as if we had never left that exact position hours earlier. Promising to have a few last events together before I left in surprise at how the Father can change an odd, grumpy man into a dear and helpful friend.

5.40 pm: Three Americans and a Korean left a Tibetan restaurant because they weren't serving any meat during this holy month of Sacadawa.

7.30 pm: I had to forcibly restrain what threatened to be a flood of tears as I commanded our Korean brother over a table littered with dinner remains to not forget his first call and the brokenness of these people. They were words that I myself needed to hear.

8.45 pm: I refused to say good-bye to the man who would tomorrow return to Korea with his family and chose instead to say see you later because it was my wish and their's that that be more accurate.

9.10 pm: My student saw me return home in the dusk and stopped me in the street to chat. Eerily close to her was a small, eager looking Chinese boy. We had the following conversation:
I: Who is this boy?
My student: He? I don't know... hehehe
Boy: FRIEND
My student: haha. No.
I: See you in class tomorrow.

9.17 pm: I searched through layers of dust thick enough to make my skin crawl for my friend;s house key she'd hidden above her door. I needed to get into her house to pick up the oven we didn't buy earlier that day. Apparently, the oven buying process is beyond my understanding of shopping.

10 pm: A phone call from a dear dear Lhasa friend like water to my soul. Refreshing, encouraging, so much light.

Midnight: now.

Sleep comes slowly when there is too much to process in a day and only 18 days remaining anyway... tears come quicker.

Everything I know about mercy...

A year ago I knew that mercy was the same color blue as a clear Lhasa sky and sounded exactly like the tinkling cow bells from the ditch outside my window. 

I've learned a thing or two about mercy since. 

*****************************************

Mercy feels like a low cloud of fog on a cool morning and takes your breath away like the beginnings of a green or purple tint to mountains you've memorized as brown and you have to strain and blink to make sure you're not just wishing it so.

And mercy tastes like tea poured from dented thermoses into questionable cups and fish hot pot so spicy your stomach burns in anticipation. It smells like a rainfall and cut grass and a breeze rolling directly off of snow capped mountains.

And I know that my Father is merciful when my students write essays to me entitled: Take Care Teacher, and words get lodged in my throat and I can't say them and I'm overwhelmed with stillness knowing that I don't have to because my face communicates perfectly the state of my heart.

And I know His mercy is deep when my boxes are packed by peace and I don't feel rushed though time continually mocks me like an arrogant child and the birds sitting on the power line running frighteningly close to my window sing as if only to me.

And I know that His mercy is extravagant when I think about the cold, dark days He's brought me out of and the way He fixes it so that I am reminded that He is still at work in my students and friends lives and the process is slow because step by often weary step is the only way to walk through life.

My Father's mercy runs down my face like tears, redemptive, like watermelon juice, sweet and cool, like a shower that cleans my soul. It fills my ears like a whisper, tender, like wind in the trees, gentle, like a symphony that plays the story of my walk. It fills the space around me like air, ever-present, like perfume, fragrant and light, like a warrior that encircles me with protection.

His mercy is a jungle, an ocean, an umbrella, a boat, a tower. It is shade, sunshine, and rain. It is the perfect amount of spice on your one kuai bag of fried potatoes and a fresh loco momo. His mercy was, is, and always will be.

Oh yes, when my days are full and my mornings are free and steam eases my mind as it slips off my tea I know with all my being that He's merciful to me. 

The word that must not be spoken.

You can't make me say it. I won't.

How am I supposed to say it to the friend who taught me everything I know about making noodles and living as a Believer in a family dedicated to idols, who now sends frantic text messages: "are you still here? are you free? we must meet!"? Can I bear it?  Can she?

And can those words really form on my lips to the student who returns after a year away teaching to knock at my door and beg me join her for dinner as she sits starry eyed reminescing about the good old days when I was their best teacher and everyone agreed I was beautiful not only because of your dimples Ms. Kelly she asserts. When the one firm fact that she remembers about me is that I study the Word on Sundays can I really say to her what I don't want to say to anyone?

Who can expect me to say what needs to be said, what is soon coming, to the sisters who throw hours away just to have me over to the junky room where they live and teach me to cook things and promise to send me anything they can afford in the midst of their poverty from Lhasa, should I crave bags of tsampa and spice when I'm gone. She sat engrossed in the Book she'd dreamed about I'd only just now been able to give her, and I couldn't think of a less appropriate time to say it... so I gladly didn't.

I tried to say it to the friends over dinner, but my attempt was weak and they blew it off demanding yet another closing party. I was glad for that too because I nearly choked thinking about the words in my throat as I listened to their amusing banter and memorized their laughter, a vain attempt to save it for a gray day later. I bought a documentary about the history of your Father, one started, and I liked it, very good.

Can I help but to refuse to say it to the man who I know adjusted his glasses and coughed a little right before I answered the phone and he, ever too formal, invited me to try fish hot pot again. I hope you don't mind he mumbled nearly drowned out in my ecstatic agreement, no he will never hear those words from me, because I'm not going to say it.

And the nun who I've been trying to contact for days who called me on an unfamiliar phone number who upon hearing the news of my time line burst into near howls of unintelligible Tibetan though I didn't come anywhere close to saying it to her... would I even dream of it now?

What exactly do I tell the classrooms full of students who have faithfully attended and been my family and my pride for these three years, who have written me into their lives, introduced me to their families, taught me more about themselves than there is things to know about English, and kept all my most lonely moments at bay? I know what I won't say...

And you can be sure that my friend who promised to go oven shopping with me, who grabbed my arm at the school gate and demanded that I accompany her on a dinner date with a man whom you could feel the strange coming from as she totally ignored him and spoke to me in English the entire time saying Kelly you are my sunshine, my boat, my umbrella, you are my lucky... who's eyes I couldn't bear to look into as they filled with tears when I demanded that she come with me to the airport... you can be quite sure friends, she'll never hear me say it.

She won't and neither will my friends who I miss until I can see them the next week, nor the grocery family who give me free nearly everything, nor the beggar children who learned my name, nor the gate grandfather who thinks I'm related to him, nor anyone else because I'm not going to say it.

I will do it. I must. It is right. The way is my Father's.

But I'm not going to say it.