The push of crowds, the touch of a robe

It is recorded that one day the crowds were pushing in on Him to such a degree that his disciples thought the question “who touched me?” was totally absurd. Who touched you? Everyone did.
It is recorded that on that day one woman touched Him and was healed. Only one. Who touched you? Oh. She did.

Shaking misplaced teasing dreams of a beach out of my head, I woke to the chilled remains of what had been a massive comedic Thanksgiving dinner for a random assortment of school staff. Dusty footprints in the carpet, Christmas tree slightly leaning with its haphazard array of ornaments, piles of sweet potato casserole encrusted dishes stacked in the sink. Saturday morning.

A student from a class that I no longer teach waits in the frigid morning air. She is unusually tall, typically shy, with long black hair tied neatly in a bun and tucked under a cap which reads 'rocking'. We make our way to a nearby teahouse, carefully choosing the sunniest patches of sidewalk. Bursts of nervous giggles and stuttered English tell tales of her recent practice teaching experience. The small students have lovely face but are so naughty. Sometimes be a teacher is so hard work. I am nervous my first time. We enter a large teahouse and order the largest thermos of sweet milk tea that only two people have a chance of consuming. Instinctively, we pull our jackets and scarves tighter around us to ward off the lingering night cold that the sun has not been able to penetrate. A glance at the grimy crumbling windows leaves little hope that it ever will.

Stories, memories, questions, jokes... an entire semester that she's been away practice teaching. Pilgrims file in and out, bowls of noodles at nearby tables appear, are doused with spice, and vanish, grungy dogs root around under tables for even the most fossilized scrap of food. And then this: remember you give some pictures about Christmas? I also use. I teach Christmas lesson. Christmas lesson! That's great, I'm happy you can use the things from our class. This is the Christmas story you give us. Wait, you taught about baby baby Yeshu, yes, first I make into Chinese, then teach. Ms Kelly, these small students never hear this story before. They have so many questions. Questions! For example? They want to know is it true story, I say I not sure. Yes, it is true story, but very old. It happened in the past. Oh yes, I remember. Also, they all want to know if I have seen this baby. I told them my teacher sees.

Last year I taught that Christmas lesson to one hundred and sixty students. At the time, they had only studied English for one semester.

The crowds were pushing in, one woman, in desperation, dared to touch just the hem of His robe. Knowing that power had gone out of Him, He turned and asked, “who touched me?” There, across the narrow warped table, over orange transparent cups of rapidly cooling sweet milk tea, in the cold bustling tea house, in Lhasa, came the answer. Let it be recorded that all of my students were present when that lesson was taught last year. Who heard that Christmas story? They all did.
It is now recorded that throughout the year only one student has ever mentioned, much more, taught it to other students whom I, nor any other foreigner, are likely to ever have contact with. Only one. Who heard that Christmas story? Oh. She did.

And power went out.

A flashback:

The bus of blue peeling paint stopped right in front of me and a man with a feathered hat and fingernails only a shade browner than his skin displayed a yellow toothed grin as he pulled on the greasy stained rope which opened the door. I hopped on and gingerly took the closest available, nearly threadbare, once patterned, seat cushion. As the bus rumble stuttered down the street, I placed the bag of shelled walnuts I had just bought in my lap and stared through the grimy, fingerprinted window into the cool glare of the afternoon which washed the bustling street in a slightly ephemeral glow.

One icy dry hand rummaged in my pocket, which had recently turned into a used Kleenex graveyard of vast proportions. It fished out two badly mangled, stained, one kuai notes. The bus fare. Held in my pale, painfully splitting fingers, these notes held nothing of fascination, being exact replicas of the many hundreds of one kuai notes that I've spent this semester... but the date caught my eye. Printed in 1999. Exactly ten years ago.

In 1999 I was 14 years old. I knew nothing, but I didn't know that at the time. Baptized the year before, the farthest I had ever traveled from my family's Chatham County, North Carolina home was to our nation's capital, roughly four hours drive away. In 1999 my tiny world was falling apart through a series of adolescent friendship reshufflings, I had no dreams, a pet sheep named Billy Bob, and somehow couldn't manage to see past the end of my clarinet. Insecure and uncomfortable in my own skin, I moved through middle school classes hardly daring to imagine a world bigger than those pastel painted, locker lined halls.

The bus jerks and sputters and the door slams open to usher in nothing other than a gust of brisk air. It's 2009. I know nothing, but this time I know it. Years into a relationship with my Savior and countless miles and hours from Chatham County, suddenly this errand run strikes me with the full force of it's absolute strangeness. Who would have ever dreamed that 1999 me would be 2009 me? Who would have guessed at me being on this bus surrounded by people who look, act, and speak totally differently than I do? Who would have looked at these chapped fingers and guessed that 10 years before they were clumsily pressing clarinet keys in total oblivion to their future? Who writes stories like this one?

The tea houses and noodle shops turn to a blur outside the gritty bus windows, further obscured by the puffs of smoke from a wild eyed man's cigarette a few seats up. A song plays in minor keys belting out a range of language I am not able to understand. I crease and recrease the one kuai notes, dizzy from the pace of change remembered by looking at a printing date. Out of the chaos, a stillness:

All of my days were written in Your book and planned before a single one of them began.

So what will tomorrow look like Father?

Old people

A breakfast of meat dumplings: juicy dumplings stuck together in a sliver bowl on a wobbly table barely a foot wide along the edge of a dank room, the expanse of which one hardly needs to turn one's head to see. Push back the grimy curtain blocking this room from the bustling city street and hobble towards an empty spot on the singular long bench: an old man. His clothes all the same shade of dusty green brown out from which thrust two nearly black, wrinkled hands delicately gripping cheap warped wooden chopsticks. He bends over his tiny sliver bowl of dumplings raising first one then another to his face which despite the wrinkles and due perhaps to the hairlessness gives one the impression that you are looking at someone much younger. His cowboy style hat nonchalantly resting on his head is the exact color of all the rest of his clothes, indeed all the rest of the city street. Upon hearing my Tibetan declaration that “these dumplings are so delicious”, he chances to look up from his own rapidly disappearing dumplings and give me a wide, gummy grin accompanied by a slightly slobbery, “so good.”

Wandering down alleys so narrow it strikes one as miraculous that ladies selling hot pancakes can actually set up tables in them, two tiny old women catch the eye. The larger of the two is also obviously younger and gently leading her companion by the arm as they both step and misstep on surely stunted feet. The older, a crippled figment of a lady in a long wool dress, gray hair neatly braided and tucked under the most absurdly out of place sun hat, is also sporting a gray book bag, half unzipped. To all appearances a small sheep leaped into her bag head first: if that small sheep had in fact been a corpse without wool or skin and frozen stiff into a leaping pose as though its front half had either lost itself in the depths of the bag or the back of the lady. The shaded frosty air of the alley provides silent witness to the fact that grandmothers bring home the bacon.

A chubby lady blocking the entrance to a shop with items piling, spilling, tipping into and over nearly every ounce of available space. Her thin gray braids peek from beneath a knitted hat as she turns to reveal eyes milky with age and chapped lips covering less teeth than can be counted on all one's fingers combined. She teeters nearly topples in an effort to turn around and remove herself from the entrance. Her clawed fingers search for but cannot grasp her small plastic bag, cane, face mask, and spare yuan all at once. To the rescue, extra hands, even foreign hands do what hers failed to. As she in her frail near helplessness does all she can to remain erect, we stuff her recently purchased items into her stained, zipperless bag, we place the extra yuan in the warm, dirty, butter smelling folds between her dress and her shirt, we reach for her cane and assure her that her face mask is secure, we send her shuffling slowly down the street, a pebble in the midst of a raging torrent of motion and activity.

Some wear their age as armor, fiercely defying social conventions as they navigate a life that is no longer theirs. Some carry it on their shoulders, nearly crushed by the passage of time. Some adorn themselves with it, wrinkles like jewels, hair like silver. Others are blinded, deafened by the years as their glazed eyes and shriveled ears testify. They live; they live slowly, hobbling where others dash; they live quietly, groaning where others shout; they live.

They are the keepers of that which once was and is no longer. Their crippled bodies, cracked skin, and crumbling pace tell stories that will never be heard. Old people, like ghosts and mirrors, populate this city: a reminder of what is forgotten, a vision of ourselves.

A pig ear acceptance

Yesterday was a threshold day for me.

It's the difference between telling a story to the class and having them giggle as wildly as the old Tibetan man in the story did and living in such a way that one has no stories to tell.

It's the difference between having a sweet shy girl tell you that she's homesick and begin to explain why her hometown is so special and wondering if you will ever even achieve eye contact with her.

It's the difference between being able to explain to the Chinese lady why she should give me a better price on that scarf and having to make the decision to pay the high price or walk away in frustration.

It's the difference between meeting a friend for lunch and taking her to a delicious, though nondescript, noodle hole in the wall and her having to take you.

It's the difference between being recognized and joyfully welcomed in some of these tiny three walled eating establishments and simply passing them by.

It's the difference between sitting down for a cup of tea in the back corner of a pink wallpapered tea house, watching in surprise as three local friends walk in, paying for their meal and shuddering in fear at the mere prospect of going into a tea house with the certainty that all are strangers inside.

It's the difference between consistently having local friends surprise you from behind every time you go to the post office and having to give yourself a pep talk before attempting to claim your boxes.

It's the difference between receiving free fruit, hugs, laughs, and dinner plans from the friendly, though totally unintelligible to the native English speaker, vegetable sellers across the street and wondering if you're getting ripped off.

It's the threshold between looking at the animal parts wagons in disgust and holding your breath as you bike by to keep the sickly smell of random boiled meat as far from your lungs as possible and actually sliding back the small plastic window, reaching past the boiled hearts and intestines, to ask the lady to slice up a pig ear and coat it with oil and spice as a snack for you and your friend.

It's the day where so much sense of familiarity and acceptance creeps in that you become dizzy contemplating if it's the city that's changed or you.

A pig ear kind of acceptance.

The milk is dying and the idols are sniffing and one girl sees only her Father's face...

Once upon a time there was a girl. She woke from a restless sleep just
in time to see the first bright slice of sun peek over the rims of the
highest mountains in the world. Everything, except the minimal dusty
traffic on the street outside her window, was still. Such stillness, she
knew, was a dream.

Blue plastic benches in the half light of morning. Four steaming bowls
on a table: black rice porridge, fresh soy milk, mushroom stuffed buns,
la jiao, and tea boiled eggs filling the space between her and a Chinese
colleague in a feast fit for Chinese kings... or ate least Chinese
construction workers. The gaps in conversation filled by slowly moving
the food from the cracked plastic table to bellies beneath. The morning
soon disappears under the shadow of such a breakfast and the glare of
winter sun.

A phone call, two students waiting at the school gate, and what could
have been a totally different day began. The girl dodged bicycles, women
with babies, men with walking sticks, three wheeled garbage trucks, and
baskets of vegetables with people buried somewhere underneath as she
followed the two adventuresome, or perhaps simply normal, boys to a bus
stop. Two buses, many laughs, a climb into the back of a dump truck and
frighteningly slow and bumpy ride up the mountain later the odd
threesome arrived. Drepung Monastery, the largest in Tibet.

She is ushered into a monk's cell and in a blink of the eye cups of
butter tea and a bowl of slowly going stale cookies appear before her.
Nibbling on the obligatory cookie and blowing the foam off the butter
tea she absorbs the formerly harsh sunlight falling softly on a room
decked out in maroon and gold everything. The Tibetan chatter swirls
around the room in the soft whispers of the monk and the shy laughter of
her students and suddenly a stranger's heavily accented English cuts the
atmosphere like a knife: please give me your passport.

The bare bench in the sun more uncomfortable and intense than any
interrogation room. The man with three ID cards talking quickly into the
phone and a teacher flanked by her two bashful and shamed students. The
man growls threats and admonitions as he records identity information,
the teacher shields her eyes in the sun and shrugs, the students ask:
can we at least go to see the temples? Or are you going to make us go
back to the school? A silence. Of course go see the temples, only next
time don't sneak into a monk's house with a foreigner. And for the
second time with no ticket purchased the three enter in...

The day and story is far from over.

Wandering around with these two students is a stunner for the girl. They
patiently describe the reason for placing food and water beneath random
statues of gods, even duplicates: of course they don't eat that food,
they are statues after all, they smell it. They carefully point out
pictures leaning in some forgotten corner of clouds that look like a
face, or a bear, or a cloud... so as not to miss an opportunity to
worship something. Here a door locked for what appears to have been
eternity covered in butter and small money offerings, of course none
other than their most famous lama's bathroom, which only he has ever
used and that over fifty years ago. Offerings to perhaps the cleanest
bathroom in the city. There a thousand identical statues, don't worry
Ms. Kelly they forgive you for not believing in them. Now another room,
now another sickly buttery smell, now another visitor desperate to
practice English: where are you from? Oh America! American English is so
delicious. Everywhere the incessant clicking and sliding of the boys'
prayer beads as they mumble through the day.

A lunch of sweet milk tea and meat dumplings then a quick stumble slide
down the mountain, past the man sitting in his hole muttering
meaningless chants all day, through the village, a lap around another
temple back out into the pot holed what's left of the city street
beneath. Two buses later and three exhausted and dusty travelers arrive
at their currently reconstructed school gate only to wish that their
beds were 100 yards closer.

The girl awakes for a second time that day to rub the grit from her eyes
as the sun begins to cast long shadows and her friend sends a message
declaring her arrival at the school gate. Hungry and happy to be with
someone fairly predictable they chat their way across the city and stuff
themselves with potato noodles, pumpkin, and tofu skins boiled in a
spicy soup and dipped in sesame oil and vinegar. The meal finishes with
a desire for Popsicles as the heat from the spice sloshes around in
their stomachs.

The stars liter the sky and the girl who awoke to one day and lived
perhaps three or more climbs out of her dirt and oil encrusted clothes
and into the same bed from which she awoke to the first bright slice of
sun peeking over the rims of the mountains. A text message: I have yak
milk for you please hurry I am afraid it will die. The girl drifts into
a restless sleep knowing one should never cry over dead milk.

Once upon a time there was a girl. She trusted her Father, she awoke
with Him peering over the mountains at her, she squeezed next to Him in
blue plastic benches, she followed Him around the city and in and out of
places where He was not welcomed, she wore Him as her armor and carried
Him as her shield, she rested in Him, she awoke once more to Him laying
the earth down to sleep, she glimpsed the twinkle in His eyes as He
called the stars out by name. He woke her up and He put her to sleep.
And that was that.

Let's pick up the pieces...

Pieces of a few yesterdays scattered on the table of life with no chance of connection...

Students stuttering, whispering, thinking in a line through their speaking exams.
The pleasure disgust at a first haircut for former nun and the subsequent phone call of gratitude for “always being there for my firsts”.
The total lack of surprise from the postal workers when I arrive to collect another box from the states.
A bowl of rice in the hands of a monk, the same hands which showed up to tea with copies of the Book, and which causally flip the edge of his maroon robe over his head to block the glaring sun.
The most laborious potato soup imaginable tasting every ounce of its delicious effort.
Crumbling classrooms full of primary school students chanting new English vocabulary “paws paws p-a-w-s paws paws” give way to a concrete courtyard and the throb of crowds of small ones pushing in to get a close up of the foreigner in their midst.
A tiny, virtually unrecognizable girl in a purple coat scolded by her peers but unable to tear herself from the presence of the strange one.
A yellowing leaf trembles and drops from a tree into unsuspecting hair beneath.
Plowing into the heart of Lhasa and through swarms of vegetable sellers to eat cold noodles in a tiny hole of a restaurant to the amusement of the noodle chefs.
Discovery of the junk seller's name and hometown and that despite our limited means of communication she is a friend as well.
A DVD of a Chinese wedding complete with hearts nonchalantly floating across the television and more ceremony that can't be explained, an hours worth of reason to be thankful that I am not an unbelieving Chinese couple.
A language being formed out of symbols, cups of sweet milk tea, and giggles; understanding hiding just out of sight.
Free butter tea at a frequented restaurant and free vegetables at a frequented market.
A sunset in poignant shades of pink orange disappearing over the crest of the mountains.
Hands so dry and cold that the fingertips can't seem to hold themselves together.

Pieces overlapping, sliding off the table, being shuffled by careful though invisible hands... anything but connecting.

Emotions like pieces lying broken, irreconcilable, conflicting, on the vague sense that the gates of hell are trembling, these mountains are preparing to bow, and the evil one is throwing punches desperately, like he knows he's going down.

And he is.

And though I can't see the connection because the more I see the less I know: but I know... one thing... I love You. You the maker of pieces and the one who puts them together.

A remembrance... not mine

Bellies full of fried potatoes and rice, I lean back on the wooden bench and study the face of my student as she asks me across the narrow chili spotted tea house table, “this year, Miss Kelly, on Thanksgiving we can eat together?”

“Of course!” a response clueless as to what depths such a request might have come from...

“Do you remember? Last year I give you Happy Thanksgiving message, you told me you do not have Thanksgiving in Lhasa, and you said that next year we together would have Thanksgiving... so we celebrate together?”

“Of course!” a response dumbfounded by the memory of a girl who has been holding on to that brief text message exchange for an entire year, a year crowded with many thousands of other events... a response gleeful over the prospect of sharing a holiday with her as my own family... a response stunned into submission by the mighty Spirit going before me in all things and barely holding back a chuckle at my surprise...

“Of course... but there's no turkey in Lhasa, we will have to eat chicken...”