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.