Small eyes, glasses, an oily face: 8 Poems commemorating my trip to Wuhan

For Trisha: whose heartbeat for her country, her people, and her past is the eternal ripple on a lake otherwise placid as glass.






THE CITY WHERE THINGS HANG

The city hums and bustles

Tall buildings fool and flashing lights glare

But from balconies above another truth hangs

Articles of life dangle in air...

Sausages in snaking links, pink sweaters, mops, bras, large fish split open wide...

A street of breakfast, a bridge honored by Mao

Gui Bei Lu and forgotten pagodas in quiet decay

But above it all swaying in the breeze slight

Hang things left to dry for use another day...

Chicken stretched unnaturally, mystery meat on rusty hooks, long underwear,

socks, rags a million shades of dingy....

An intense vegetarian with an agenda to share

Gives way to a museum: no psychopaths allowed

A story of musical understanding: Zhi Yin

And above things hand, damply, but proud...

Frayed jeans, empty plastic buckets, fatty pork, gloves, a hat, tan brooms made

of splintered sticks...

Dangling, Draping, Fluttering, Flapping... Hanging above the city.

GO

Warm soy milk and deep fried breakfast wrap: two hands full in a taxi go

A bus station, and a bus ride, and a city where things hang slip by a foggy

window

Tall buildings shrink to small ones space out like a gapped tooth grin

And a man sings: I moved heaven and earth

Why can't I move you?

Dirty ducks in a dirty dirty creek, women cleaning cotton on a broken sidewalk

go

Why doesn't she speak? Asks the aproned male chef to the Chinese girl with

foreign one in tow

Children giggle wildly, wooden chairs become their fort

And freshly killed fish swim in a spicy soup

Filling expectant stomachs

A walk through town past pebble piles in heaps to view a sludgy river go

Chinese couples in the grass and the unaccusing sunset watch the mucky river

flow

A boat, a bike, a man with fishing pole

A poem remembered and then

We become the scenery

In a clean home waits king baby and a tired grandmother quick we go

The baby night life has begun and we fear to miss the show

Endless high pitched children's songs, toys scattered on the floor

The baby entertains until

We can take no more

A TRIP BACK IN TIME TO A YELLOW DOOR

The taxi breaks we disembark

The present and the past collide

Thin dogs in crowded cages tight

Above them hangs their fate belied

Off the main street steps become mud

A peeling green door and metal latch locks

Out curious girls who hear whispers of pain

And through a small hole a family's history talks

A sideways glance: we were on your mother's side

Shouts a time puckered Nai nai shaking her cane

Her weathered face can count back the years

And memories and chickens appear in the lane

The sun shifts pale through a blue gray sky

A scroll of images revealed

Black cats and kettles and levees take rest

While carrots and cabbages sleep in the fields

Stories are told and a vision unfurls

Of a city which changes but some parts may never

The bicycle repair man has been there for years

But the weasels which hang are impermanent as weather

A walk near a river overflowing with trash

Proves relatives are always around the next bend

A raspberry allergy lovingly remembered

And a home where soybeans are ground to their end

And then...

Posted on a yellow door

A Chinese sign claims: For Rent

The broken dusty street outside

Speaks of lives all but spent

The house with the yellow door

What past could it hold tight?

The house with the yellow door

Dare future dreams alight?

TERMINATOR

Faded moldy photos in a worn album turn

A torn and yellowed slip of paper lists

Five birthdays but only four names labeled

The sister was given away: whispered

The swell of difficult decisions past crashes on the undulating shores of now

The dusty old bus away from the city shudders

Hotels and shops and street vendors fade

A slumped old man with holes for eyes in a broken chair sleeps

Outside fields and lakes appear and inside Terminator plays

The American movie like a phantom haunts the sparse Chinese countryside

Back in a cheap hotel room the word 'scuzzy' is defined

Old Chinese cartoons and theme songs remembered

La Ta Da Wang: Big King Scuzzy introduced

The coral colored room with shaking laughter fills

A history of sadness and joy like intersecting strokes of a Chinese character

THE ICE AGE COMETH

Black rice pudding in a thing plastic up

Cool instantly: chilled sweet sludge

The museum a prayer for warmth unanswered

Relics from tombs at home in the frosty museum air

Five sections reveal a rotten corpse forgotten

Surrounded by cambers of time destroyed riches

The east of ritual vessels; the mundane occupies the west

The north plays music; but the south screams for blood

Perched in a glass box awaiting curious onlookers

A tall bird with curved antlers grins

Stepped out of another world and froze to bronze in this one

Feet stamped, hands rubbed, the sky outside pregnant with snow

Snow falls and falls and falls and falls

The white silence descending brings hush to the city

Breath hands like low fog in a hotel room of ice

Snow drifts and sleep; dreams become vegefables

ASIAN SNOMAN ADVENTURE

There once was a girl

She walked out into cold

And onto a bus

The number unknown

Assuming circular routes

There once was a girl

Watched the city slip by

Piles of dirty snow

Soon alone on the bus

Driving into wilderness

There once was a girl

Soon alone on the street

Again in the cold

The driver walked away

And she found a new bus

There once was a girl

On another bus

All assumptions shattered

Watched a city appear

And a frosty lake fade

There once was a girl

On a strange warm bus

In a strange cold city

A stranger seeking heat

Only found in a Starbucks

There once was a girl

Observed the melting snow

Chinese snowmen

Being surprisingly distinct

From American ones

SICK: AN ODE TO HEAT

Hovering, shaking, shuddering over a porcelain hole

Your insides ooze out and your knees give way

Pondering reality as you stare at stained black and gray tiles

Outside frozen temperatures are matched by those within

Tension in all muscles and a numbing fatigue

Heat unable to hold

Every thought, every movement a vain effort of warmth

Remembering life before shivers a challenge

Mindful only of frozen fingers and cramped body

Insist on a room with heat

And the Sakura Castle looms majestically through discomfort

THE RIVERSIDE OF A DESPERATE WORLD

Mucky water shifts over dull mud like the haunting realization that your mother

has never complimented you.

A rusty boat glides into view like too many failures noted too frequently.

The gray sky above a paler version of the gray river below like a glance at

society that is dark becoming darker.

And a pink kite dances on the damp fishy air...

We wish you a happy forever: five days of Christmas

It began at Thanksgiving with a lopsided plastic Christmas tree pulled from depths unknown and a ziploc bag full of wooden ornaments and tinsel given to some Chinese colleagues who had asked to help do something. The resulting Christmas could never have been predicted from the subsequent tree which somehow managed to have only about three branches decorated though the entire bag of ornaments was used.

December 18th: A Christmas lesson, or two.

Wheezing up four flights of stairs on a bitterly cold morning I seriously questioned if I was going to be able to survive any lesson with my head throbbing due to a cold. But I had a story to tell, and gifts to give out, determined I walked into class. The students knew the story but only remembered bits of it and watch attentively as a magnetic Mary and Joseph made their way across the board to Bethlehem. Their lovely faces lit up in disbelief as I pulled Christmas tree ornaments for them to make, then cards from people in America, then small bags of pens and candy out of my bag to give them. We sang a Christmas song, made the ornaments, and I asked: why don't you eat your candy? Because I am saving mine for my mother...father... brother... sister.

A few hours break and then up the stairway to the clouds to do it again. This time my stomach was tight with too much medicine and not enough food and my nose was dripping down my face. But I had a story to tell, and more gifts to give out, and determined I walked into the second class. Only to be sprayed with silly string and shaving cream and greeted by way too excited students and more balloons hanging from the ceiling and taped to the wall than I dared to count. Then on the board this message: We wish you a happy forever. Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday Ms. Kelly. Nearly dumbfounded, I muttered: Today is not my birthday... a claim which garnered the quick response: We know! But we wanted to celebrate everything with you! A cake on my desk lit up with candles and that neon Chinese icing proved their point. Gathering my nerve, I begged them to be still and as students piled around I erased the back chalkboard and with cell phone videos rolling magnetic shepherds watched their flocks by night and three magnetic wise men came from the east to see the bright magnetic baby in a feeding trough. The birth of a king, notice the cattle.

The rest of class was the standard Tibetan party I've grown accustomed to: too many pictures, circle dancing, cake icing on every face, and when their gifts and ornaments and cards came out they were almost too excited to notice. But later in a tea house I hear this: Ms. Kelly, those gifts so special because they are from America, from you. Maybe we keep them forever.

December 21st: The stragglers.

A few students had not been in class the day that we did the Christmas lesson... when one boy finished his exams I walked over to his desk with his card and small bag of candy and pens. His expression was almost beyond written description: Shy eyes wide and mouth open with trembling fingers he took the gifts. In his face was written a thousand questions: Why are you giving this to me? I didn't come to class. Are you angry? Should I apologize? Make up some excuse? Questions washed off his face as I shrugged and said: Merry Christmas Lhalang.

December 24^th: A party and a phone call... the text messaging begins.

An entire day spent readying myself for a community Christmas party at another foreign teacher's house. No idea who will come or how it will turn out... all I can do is ask that He be honored. A seven o'clock start time and by well after eight everyone who we expected to come is there. Time filled with Christmas carols explained then sung, sugar cookies passed around, and then a Christmas story read in parts: You look like you could be a wise man! Chatter and laughing and a few awkward moments and a cat chasing after a laser beam. Then party's over and the guests file out. A phone beeping endlessly with what is the start of Merry Christmas messages from every student and friend who takes the time to remember. At a very exhausted midnight a phone call: Ms. Kelly, can you tell me the Christmas story... I want to teach it to my students tomorrow... and the alarming story of a little baby in a village stable is told again as the icy stars twinkle in a black sky over the highest mountains in the world.

December 25^th: Christmas day... an elf brings muffins to Lhasa then eats fish hot pot

A morning spent eating breakfast, drinking tea, exchanging gifts, and watching veggie tales with my teammate... the atmosphere being ripe for references to silicon sea of Galilee muffin tins to be uproariously funny. My own oven hot from the shuffle of muffin mixes sent from home and baked in order to give out later in the afternoon. Rest and company, time in Matthew and Luke being struck again and again at the strange beauty of the story which was told so many times this season. Then out of the house with plastic bags of muffins and little cards with translated notes inside.

Like an elf on the streets of Lhasa, I repeat over and over in my mind the Chinese (Sheng Dan Kuai Le) and Tibetan (Yeshu trungar tashi deleg) phrases for Merry Christmas... First stop: the copy man. His surprise and joy at my struggling Sheng Dan Kuai Le presented with a bag of muffins crinkles up his face in the biggest smile I've ever seen and floods his watery eyes... Then the illiterate girl who sells junk: She proudly holds the warm muffins in her hands and asks again and again in the only language she knows (a street mix of Chinese and Tibetan) You made these for me?...Then the lady who sells drinks: It takes her a minute to understand my badly mispronounced Chinese but when I thrust the bag of muffins in her hands she gets it and starts to giggle and nod and thank me in that particularly endearing Chinese way... Then the grocery store family, whose daughter in another city has already sent me my morning Merry Christmas message, they receive my gift in that semi expectant way of family and I get the same hug that I always get from the mother at the cash register... Then a walk up the street to the nunnery teahouse only to be greeted halfway there by my nun friend who speaks no English but who loves me anyway. She gets a card and a bag of muffins in total cluelessness: she has no idea what Merry Christmas means, even in Tibetan... Finally, a stop at the monastery teahouse where I dispense my last bag of muffins of the day to a monk friend who comments: This is the second Christmas I have seen you on.

I return to the apartment only to have been visited from leaders at my school while I was out bearing a bag of fruit and tomatoes which must have weighed five kilos. Oranges, grapes, lychee, tomatoes, and dried persimmons tumble out of the bulging bag. Then dinner with some colleagues. They drive us outside of the city to a little hot pot restaurant far from the beaten path where we stuff ourselves to maximum capacity on fish hot pot and then, in utter gluttony, chicken hot pot... laugher and chatting and songs and jokes are shared in perhaps the first dinner that I've ever been invited to with Chinese colleagues where English was actually spoken. In the car on the way back I half joking half sincerely comment: First we are together at Thanksgiving and now again at Christmas... I think you really are my family... and Liu Ying: you are my father... to the oddly amusing laugher of the strange man in the backseat.

December 27: the finale and my five year old Tibetan tutor

I get a phone call this morning as my stomach rolls and summersaults from the second round of hot pot (this time black chicken) from the night before. Kelly we will come to your school gate and pick you up at 5p then we will go to eat a Christmas dinner together with some friends. Are you free? In the crystal clear English of a Tibetan believer who is also the brother of a dear sister of mine. So I eat crackers and drink tea and nap in vain attempt to alleviate my stomach woes before 5p. Then its a dash out the door into the cold and across the nearly deserted campus and out into the street to await the bus which they are all riding together. To my delight, among the dinner guests that night is another sister's five year old half brother... a mischievous boy whom I had dug potatoes out of the ground next to and who had passed me dried yak dung on a visit to their village earlier in the year. We ride the bus to the center of town and getting off my hand is grabbed by the dirty pussy swollen hand of the five year old. We walk together to the restaurant: he oblivious to the amount of attention that a foreigner holding a Tibetan child's hand gets. The dinner is thoroughly enjoyable and thoroughly Tibetan: salty butter tea, meat, potatoes, the old father mumbling about how tsampa is more delicious than all of it... However the food and other guests totally melt away and vanish as all my attention is on the five year old. He has spent the time waiting for the food to arrive teaching me all the words he knows: amjoo (ear) nagoo (nose) dja (hair) lhagba (arm and hand) ka (mouth) jeelee (tongue) trogo (stomach) and the particularly difficult one for me to remember, which he drills into my head by asking di kadre? (what's this?) numerous times beating his small fist on my over-sized thigh for every wrong answer: drogtze (table). He races me to finish his bowl of rice and asks for another... his favorite dish on the table being the same as mine: pickled radish fried with meat.. and begs me gela sunlapuh nga gohyu gela di ngla jecha (teacher I want pickled radish teacher give it to me) He tells me where he is ticklish, he is visibly proud when I let him press the send button on my cell phone, he seems content with my limited ability to remember random vocabulary. On the way out he lets me carry him like an airplane down the stairs to the shock and confusion of the entire dining area whom cannot seem to coincide a very foreign girl carrying a very Tibetan baby, complete with monastery ash smeared on his nose for luck. This baby became the embodiment of the baby in a manger to me: dirty, smelling of animals, hair sticking in every direction, grin like the world's joy. He knows for the few hours that we ate dinner he was my world and he nearly falls asleep on my lap despite the halting jerky sputter of the bus home.

A Christmas of parties, gifts, muffins, friends, strange food, too much fruit, songs, and a dirty child who I can still almost feel on my lap... and a dirty child who lay shivering in a feeding trough who grew into a man who died for love of you and me. Merry Christmas.

Sisters

Dashing in front of cars gearing up their engines as the light turns from red to green, my student's sister, Tibetan writing tutor, and friend waits shyly for me at the corner holding some small thin plastic bags of vegetables: our lunch.

She is small, made smaller by her mannerisms: eyes quick to turn downwards, tongue peeking from apologetic lips, the posture of one who is sure she's going to be beat from above. You would never know that she trained inland to be a dancer for three years. Her dirty hair pulled back in a bun, obviously exhausted, carrying a heart heavy with grief. Her mother died five weeks ago of a brain annuerism... she is the oldest of at least eight children... according to Tibetan Buddhism her mother's soul is wandering now, and will continue to do that for another two weeks. She is sad, lonesome even in her joyful moments, her mind wandering with her mother's spirit.

Today is the first time I've ever been invited to her house.

We walk down streets that smell like urine and turn a corner down a narrow lane empty except for a few garbage collectors sitting on the side walk having tea. We duck into an alley just wide enough for two people to walk side by side and nearly climb up the wall as a motorcycle comes roaring through. Houses built on top of houses, alleys that dead end in trash heaps, and courtyards that never see the sun. Through a rusty red door up some concrete stairs and to the right is her house. A room.

A room slammed with all the necessities of life: a stove, broken mirror, two hard Tibetan style beds, a small table, cabinet for books, clothes, and anything else, some plastic bowls and a few thermos' of hot water is the entire world. A cup materializes out of no where and I find myself set to the task of drinking an entire thermos of some ginger and pear concoction. Her sister who is my student is there, and another sister with a one year old baby also stays with her. My student is perpetually busy, never sits down but wanders in and out cleaning anything she can, boiling more water, fetching things for the baby. The other sister throws the little one on her back, rubs his recently shaved head, and continuously licks his pacifier. The baby chortles, makes delightfully wise and curious expressions, and does the one trick he knows: lifts his hands in the Tibetan sign for 'drink some more', and my friend sets about explaining the Tibetan farmer's almanac to me.

Time passes.

We go about the business of cooking lunch. Fried vegetables and rice requiring more dishes that have materialized from the same unseen place as my cup. Oil made from their hometown and poured from dusty stained containers heated just so becomes the base for every dish. The process takes time because the dishes must be cleaned in order to be used for the next thing. As the third dish of fried egg and tomatoes gets set on the table the first becomes stone cold. The sisters and I sit down on beds and a rope stool to eat. The baby gets fussy but his mom hasn't eaten. I mutter a half hearted 'di-sho' (come!) knowing that the typical response that I get from children is blood curdling screams and to my surprise he toddles over and begs to get in my lap where I sit rocking and humming over him until his mother takes him back.

Time passes.

Lunch is over but not the day. I offer to clean dishes; an offer that is met by scornful looks from all three of the sisters, including the one who doesn't speak English. So instead I make my way up the grated metal stairs to the roof. Two sisters stay behind to clean and the third with the baby also heads up. The view is strange. Like standing in a rooftop soup with the rim of the bowl some dusty mountain ridges. All is sun baked gray tan color. So I shift my perspective and in surprise notice all of the other people on rooftops: grandmothers sleeping on crocheted afghan covered cushions, young men playing guitar, women hanging laundry, children darting playfully through tangles of wires, and an old man with butter tea cup in hand and jaw dropped at the sight of a foreigner... Lhasa lives on a rooftop.

The baby entertains as sisters below clean madly. I walk with him in circles around the dusty wire strewn roof until his chubby legs give out and he sleeps with his mother on some cardboard in one corner. Making my retreat to the cold dark room below, the two sisters prepare to make sweet milk tea, and I warm my feet near the blessed heat lamp. In a moment with just the two of us my friend whispers: this would be a so happy day for me if my mother were... without her I have no.

Time passes.

Hot water comes and goes, thermos' are emptied and their contents transferred from one to the next, my cup is emptied and filled in one never ending cycle and the sleeping baby and third sister come down to join us as the wind has picked up outside blowing cold dust and grit over the rooftops. They chat, we pass miniature oranges around, the sisters begin to tell tales of their childhood together, mock each other, and make jokes, and things get really silly when my student mixes up the thermoses and we get drinks of absurd combinations. We laugh in that violent silent way so as not to wake the baby. So he wakes up to spite our attempts at quiet and is given a bowl of roasted barley flour to dip his pacifier in, they offer me some mud rolled into pill shape and blessed by a monk, it is declined but the baby reaches for the extra helping. Then we sing. We sing the only song that all four of us know: the Tibetan alphabet song... we sing it until it is lines the ridges of my brain, the sweet milk tea runs dry, and the sun creeps totally out of sight... all to the uncontrolled mirth of the baby.

Time passes.

And my student and I get up to go back to the school and my friend also comes so that she can meet another friend for dinner leaving the cold room for the third sister and the baby. We make plans for the following week, and my last in Lhasa before the break, we make plans for next term, make plans for the summer. She says: Kelly teacher, my house is also yours... And I sense that this is the most that she can give me and means to do just that.

Time has passed: bus number 502 squeals to an exhaust fumed stop and we part.

But, for six hours I was a sister.

Language learning: the reprise

Sitting in my living room, vaguely reminiscent of a refrigerator which someone has decorated with a blinking multi colored Christmas tree, with a furry Tibetan apron tied around my waist for warmth, I touch my icy hands to my tender and chapped nose and think about yesterday.

Yesterday, a day heralded by the sure signs of yet another cold at hand, I battled the dizziness induced by twenty speaking exams and the slow progression of my cold, dragged myself shivering from the sunbeam where I had napped, donned two coats, grabbed an extra pack of sand paper-esque tissues, and went to my weekly Tibetan speaking practice time with my dear friend.

A decision which would change the course of my language learning forever.

She was in a strange mood, a story that I didn't catch all of but which might have included something which blew up at the cafe she managed. I was tired. We walked to a small tea house nestled in a corner of some alley not too far off the main road and I ordered tea while she went down the street to use the public restroom. Shortly upon her return, another friend joined us, the tea and bowls of soupy noodles also arrived...

Perhaps it was the warmth of the tea and noodles sloshing around in my empty stomach, or the riotously poor pronunciation of her friend, or the endless line of beggars singing and playing songs for us (one whom I recognized from an embarrassing experience a few weeks earlier), or the new Tibetan proverb I had recently learned: tzeekba gapbe pungoo the donkey wears leopard clothes... my exhaustion had reached the far more amusing stage of just plain silly.

Just plain silly: the unique moment when the elements align so as to produce unwarranted boldness and a gracious audience.

Things in Tibetan were just coming out of my mouth: what color is this? What color is my hair? Yellow? Yellow no way! My hair is the same color as the table or the earth or the tea. Why do you tell lies? I don't believe you. Everyday I work, everyday I teach. Because I need money. I always don't work I will become beggar. No money. I always eat so many noodles and drink so much tea I will become pig. Pig wears girl clothes... The man sitting at the neighboring table merrily munched his spicy potatoes and chuckled endlessly, the two ladies in one corner peered around my friend's back and made no effort to hide their amusement, the young girls wearing stained blue aprons giggled brightly, and at the beggar comment I think I saw some tea come out of a grandmother's nose as she burst out laughing.

So this is how you speak Tibetan.

I had to catch a bus in time for another meeting back at my school, bidding the tea house farewell I dashed off to catch a bus numbered 503. There were two at the corner and I wheezily caught up to the first one only to step off again as it was standing room only. A quick turn around and I hopped on the second one, to the amusement of the bus cashier to whom I muttered, also in Tibetan, that one has too many people. At the next stop a Tibetan teacher from our school took the seat behind me and our conversation progressed in halting English and Tibetan. A small primary school girl named Nawang tsomo also joined into the fun. After comparing textbooks with Nawang tsomo, we both sharing the same level book to my shame and her joy, in a flash of inspiration I exclaim in Tibetan: English language is so easy but Tibetan language...ahmo! It's so difficult! A comment which was greeted with grins and laugher bus wide and which garnered the reply: You are an American girl so English is easy and Tibetan is difficult. We are Tibetan so Tibetan is easy and English is difficult. My rdje rdje of affirmation almost cost a nearby cyclist his life owning to the driver's mirthful distraction. The bus atmosphere was familial as the conversation turned to how long I had been in Lhasa, what I was doing here, and oh wait this is my stop.

So this is what it means to communicate in Tibetan.

I disembarked from the bus and shook my head in disbelief. Wasn't only a year ago when the only words I knew were teacher, candy, and dangerous? Or even less than that? And now here I am with enough language ability to make people laugh with, and no longer at, me...

It's not enough, but it's a start, and motivation to continue.

many things

Total weariness pervades everything, it curls up on the lap of my mind drawing me inward unable to process these past few days. The tiny miracles which display the Father and the wild events which display the gaping holes in His heart for the utter lostness of this people collide and scatter like a box of puzzle pieces dumped on a table or thrown over the edge of a tall building.

A conversation about the wandering period of souls after death before rebirth back into the wheel of life leaves no room for English translation, or an English teacher's understanding. An evening of crowds bordering on mass hysteria gathered together in a plaza for an event of long forgotten significance, in the tug and heat of the mob a glimpse of two students a moment to link arms with them, draw them close, and beg them to be safe. Babies carried on shoulders sporting toboggans reading: HAPPY so that they won't be crushed in the dark semi drunk crowds. An orphanage nestled in a nearby valley and the small ice cold hands of children eating balls of roasted barley flour and butter for breakfast then grabbing the foreigner's hand to lead her to their bed rooms. A tiny boy, far too small for his clothes, pouring water for his fellow orphans, zipping up jackets, then going to fetch a mop for some additional act of service. A trip to a tea house and upon entering being greeted by a nun, climbing the stairs to sit on the carpet that serves as her bed as the sweet tea flows and hugs and smiles abound... she refuses to let go of my hand. A lunch at a new Chinese restaurant only to be totally loved up in a language that I can't understand by the old Chinese grandmother in charge. Another tea, another conversation, another lifetime... words are explained that have no English meaning, butter tea greases the insides and a trio of girls laugh at the brother's prolonged and nearly totally fluent English descriptions of angry ghosts. A totally mundane and oblivious walk down the street only to be suddenly rushed at and hugged by the girl who used to sell junk outside of the school gate my joy at seeing her falteringly expressed by few Tibetan phrases that my surprise would allow.

Days where there are too many interesting things, too much evidence that the Father is indeed at work, too many reasons to be excited and thankful and expectant... totally crushed under the heavy weight of fatigue, blocked out by the pounding headache induced by the neighbors obnoxious pounding on the wall.

Like puzzle pieces thrown over the side of a tall building, dripping through the air like rain, scattering on the pavement far beneath like memories. And so tired that it looks like it's happening in slow motion.

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?