Category Archives: home

A Bit of the Journey

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A friend of my mom’s who used to live in Kansas recently reached out to me after coming across my blog. One of the questions she asked was about my journey in coming to Thailand, as well as my journey in writing poetry. I had already been tossing ideas about in my mind in relation to writing about the latter topic, and her suggestion got my mind rolling. What exactIy got me started writing poetry, or writing in general? It’s hard to say. Books, events, people, words of encouragement, God… all these things. Perhaps explaining in depth about all the details of what poetry means to me and how I began writing poetry would sort of be like taking all the beauty and mystery out of the story, like Carl Sandburg said. He said, “Roses, sunsets, faces have mystery. If we could explain them, then after having delivered our explanations we could say, ‘Take it from me, that’s all there is to it, and there’s no use your going any further for I’ve told you all there is and there isn’t any more.’ If poems could be explained, then poets would have to leave out roses, sunset, and faces…” Perhaps if every detail of our journey could be explained then it would lose its mystery. All that to say, here are a few bits and pieces of the journey.

In the first grade, I published my first essay. Miss Denise told me to write about our hobbies as a contribution to the school newspaper. Not only were we supposed to write about our hobbies, but we were to write why we liked to do them.

Mine went like this:

I like to bike.

I like to eat.

I like to sleep.

I like to bike because I like to.

 I like to eat because I get hungry very fast.

I like to sleep because then I don’t have to work.

Brutally honest and to the point. (Some of my editors probably wish I would practice some of that “to the pointness” again.)

In the second grade, I got in trouble with my teacher, who happened to be my cousin as well. I didn’t hear my class of 3 called to the table for our lesson, because I happened to be happily lost in a book, probably something like Dan Frontier or the Mr. T.W. Anthony Woo, or (shudder) the Hardy Boys.

I had to stay in at recess and put my head on my desk as a punishment.

In the third grade, I wrote a story. It was read aloud to the class and published in the school newspaper. It was of slightly better quality than my first-grade venture and was something about a boy who went on a hunt with his uncle.

In the fourth grade I got a new teacher. To the embarrassment of my older siblings, I again had hearing problems when I was lost in a book. Mr. Wes was slightly more understanding than the other teacher. Instead of punishing me, he came to my desk and got my attention. That was the year we had the new history books with the colorful, fascinating pictures of the American History. The history books were the frame for the historical fiction and the autobiographies that were donated to the school and devoured by my classmates and I.

In the 5th grade, my teacher set aside a class period each week for Creative Writing. During this time, we did all sorts of writing exercises, including one about a dinosaur wearing pink pajamas. We wrote descriptive paragraphs and stories and got feedback on our writing. The word counts of our stories rose along with the lists of ideas in our stories. Where at first 500 words had seemed insurmountable, we now found that it wasn’t enough to say what we wanted to say. The most popular topics were stories of the Underground Railroad and runaway slaves. My brother’s stories usually included either cattle rustlers or American Indians or cops and robbers or detectives or all of the above.

In the 6th grade, I started to care about my grades and began to pour myself into school. I especially looked forward to the Creative Writing each week. Close to the end of the year, we entered some of our stories into the local library’s writing contest and I was dumbfounded when the librarian called and said that I had won second prize for my age group.

7th grade brought Rainbow Writing. Finally, I was away from Climbing to Good English and diagramming long, dry sentences and labeling adjectives and adverbs, and instead, let loose on creative assignments. We formed groups with the 8th graders and had Peer Editing Conferences. I struggled emotionally that year and found that writing could help me release and process. I think that was the year that we started being penpals with students from Sterling College. My pen pal was Rachel Wise, and I adored her. I found an outlet in writing to her, and to this day wish I could see those letters again. I started writing some poetry and was introduced to the names and work of some of the great American poets like Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe when I wrote a research paper on American Literature. Emily of New Moon and the Chronicles of Narnia became favorites of mine and influenced these early years of writing. That year I penned a poem called “Echo Dreams,” which was published anonymously in the school newspaper.

8th grade brought the Lively Art of Writing by Lucille Payne. I loved everything about that book. October also found my class of three sitting in John Mast’s living room. The first day I found out that we were going to write a book compiling his stories, I lay down on my mattress and tried to soak it in. It seemed unbelievable to a 13 year old. That year we read through the A Beka Themes in Literature book, and the poetry in that book came alive for me like never before. Poems like, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and Longfellow’s The Day is Done are some of my favorites.

 Life in the 8th grade was less tumultuous than 7th grade. It was full of promise and hope and I was incredibly sad when it ended. 8th grade marked the last of my school career (at that point) but I wasn’t ready for it to stop. I seriously imagined refusing to take my diploma on graduation day. (But then again, I imagined a wide variety of things).

After I left school at the age of 13, life was no longer marked in grades, but in years. 14 and 15 found me at home, mostly milking cows and memorizing lists of cow genealogies and sire attributes and the names, birthdates, and histories of every single cow. Without school, my brain had a lot of thinking space and needed something to stay busy. Thankfully, cows were interesting to me or I cringe to think of what else I would have swallowed up had I access to other things. I started to read through our set of encyclopedias but only made it to page 76 of the A book. I dreamed of writing a book and wrote out some plots but I rarely made it past the hatching stage of the story. Poetry was easier since you could do it in small amounts and then come back and rework it. Also, I am bad at grammar, and poetry gave me more poetic license than prose.

Around the age of 14 and 15, I began reading my Bible daily, especially books like Job and Isaiah and the Psalms in the KJV. The Word slowly began to influence my life more and more, and I would read it for the beauty of the words. Who wouldn’t fall in love with words like this? “And he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand hath he hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in his quiver hath he hid me.” (Isaiah 49:2 KJV)

16 was the year I could finally join the youth group at church and have a social life. It brought a lot of growing pains and secret crushes and joy and heartache. I began reading and writing more poetry as a way of expression. Shortly after my 16th birthday I discovered Tennyson’s “Sweet and Low” and would recite parts of that and the “Charge of the Light Brigade” to my horse as I rode down miles of outback roads that summer. Like the verses in the Bible that I had discovered, I fell in love with the simple uncluttered rhythm and beauty of “Sweet and Low.”

Sweet and low, sweet and low,
         Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
         Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon, and blow,
         Blow him again to me;
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

While outsiders view Kansas as one of the most boring states in the USA, many Kansans are proud and appreciative of the unique beauty of their state. Whether it’s the seas of golden wheat, or the burnt orange and browns of the CRP, or the barren beauty of winter or the wind that Kansas was named after, I found my surroundings a goldmine for inspiration for poetry. Capturing the spirit of the prairie almost became an obsession at times. At 16 I penned “Dust and Wind.”

Wind, wind, endless wind

Fleeting o’er the fields

Dancing in, flying in,

One long roaring wave.

Roaring wave of dust and wind,

Of dust and wind,

Of dust and wind.

Whirlwind of the land

In one unceasing blow

Sweeping lanes and in each hand

One unending broom

Unending broom of dust and wind

Of dust and wind

Of dust and wind

Wind, wind, blowing wild

And talking to me now

Talking to its lonely child

Daughter of the wind

Daughter of the dust and wind,

Of dust and wind

Of dust and wind

I felt deeply, and still do, about death. The death of relatives, people from our church, and the parents of friends hit me hard. In 2011, I wrote this poem after a friend’s father was killed in a tractor accident, and another friend’s mom passed away after being attacked by a bull.

No Words

She’s gone

Like a fragment from a weaving torn

Leaving you who have felt the sorrow born

Through ripping, tearing pain

And we grasp for words that are old and worn

And suddenly seem vain

I have no words.

They fail me when I see the sorrow

The endless aching of tomorrow

Stretched out over the years

I have no words that I can borrow

Only tears.

When I started teaching part time at the age of 20, I felt like I had found my happy space. My only disappointment was when my students weren’t always as excited as I was about the writing projects I assigned. As I taught English, I also began to get much better at it myself. That Christmas I read Jesse Stuarts The Thread that Runs so True for the first time. At 21, I had the opportunity to go to Faith Builders for summer term. As I had written about in this post here, I sat in on Jonas Sauder’s Poetry Appreciation class, which was the first time I really had a lot of interaction with other people who knew and loved and wrote poetry more than I did. It was there that while homesick, I wrote the poem, “Harvest Song.”

Harvest Song

And I must go down to the fields again

Through the shimmer of summer heat,

And walk through the waves of deepening gold

The oceans of ripening wheat;

Then I’ll stand on the edge where the grass still grows

Green by the amber shore,

And feast my eyes with a fierce wild joy

For the harvest is once more.

And I must go to where the sky is pinned

To the earth like an up-turned bowl

Where the hot wind sighs its searing breath

Against my face, and I’ll feed my soul

By the wide expanse of dying wheat

That moves and ripples and flies

And sings the song of my native blood

Harvest beneath the Kansas skies.

The next year at school, I did a poetry week with my students. At the end, I let the students choose a poem to recite at our program on the last day of school. It was interesting to see how each student chose a poem that seemed to fit their personality. Davy chose “The Turkey Shot Out of the Oven” (Jack Prelutsky), humorous and well-written. Micah stood at the front of the audience and recited innocently and soberly while his stick-out ears and wayward hair belied his innocence,

I did not eat your ice cream

I did not swipe your socks.

I did not stuff your lunch box

With rubber bands and rocks

I did not hide your sweater

I did not dent your bike

It must have been my sister

We look a lot alike

(I Did not Eat Your Ice Cream, Jack Prelutsky)

Javin read “Little Brown Pony” with a bridle in hand. And Jessamy in first grade recited,

The fog comes

on little cat feet

It sits looking over harbor and city

on silent haunches

And then moves on.

(Fog, by Carl Sandburg).

I started talking with friends about the possibility of publishing a book of poems. I had seen some compilations that sparked the idea, and after a few years of thinking about it, self-published a book of poems called Echoes of Eternity. Beulah Nisly, my mom’s cousin, agreed to donate her photography to the book. I have sweet memories of the fall of 2012, selecting the photos and discussing poetry. Her photos were exquisite and evocative. She captured Kansas in such a way that sometimes it felt like it would be better to leave the poem out.

The book came out in the spring of 2013, just a week or so before I traveled to Thailand the first time. Bad timing. Could I do it over again, I would do many things differently. One of those things would be finding someone to edit it more critically, but I had few of those kinds of mentors to turn to.

After moving to Thailand in 2014, I kept on writing, but perhaps more sporadically. During my college years I struggled with writing academically because I felt encased in rules and regulations. I hated it. College and living in another culture took a lot of brain energy, so there were times when I wrote little poetry. In December of 2019, however, I compiled a “tradebook” of poems, which was much less ambitious than my first venture, (I had more sense and less money) but with better quality poetry. This I titled, Through a Glass Darkly.

There you are, a taste of where and why and how I came to write poetry. I think I used to write poetry as a young girl because I loved the cadence and the imagery and the thrill of being able to take an event or a feeling and express it in words that touched my own heart. As I grew older, I wrote it more prayerfully. These days in addition to that, I find myself writing poetry as a way of reaching out to God in the empty and lonely spaces of my life. It’s a way that I can pray without really even knowing what I am praying for. Sometimes after I have written it out, I can finally understand what I really was feeling. And often only then feel relief.

Even after writing this, I find myself hesitating to publish it because it feels like when people write something like this, they write from the viewpoint of someone who has already arrived. I don’t think a poet ever quite arrives. And even as I write that, I realize I also hesitate to call myself a poet. But now, after throwing all political correctness and sensitive conscience to the wind, I will publish it. This is simply the story of an ordinary person who loves words.

photo credit pixabay

Interlude

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And all that has passed before us, this day, this rain

And the sunshine and the green, green meadow

Are swallowed in the night that comes softly,

Silent and dear and painful;

When the memories of those times and the echoes of that laughter

Throb soundlessly beneath the symphony of crickets

And the boom of the frogs in the marsh.

While we wait with wistful ears for a voice

That comes from beyond those thousand deep-set stars

To sing over us in the twilight of our hearts.

Shoes (spoken word video)

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Two years ago, I wrote one of my favorite pieces ever, “Shoes.” This was done for my Intercultural Communication class in which my teacher had us study different aspects of identity and culture, and various social issues. At the end of the class, we were asked to creatively express ourselves in relation to what we had studied, as a cathartic activity (the word cathartic to me is such an ugly word. It always makes me think of the sound people make when they cough up mucus).

At the time, I wrote and performed the poem as a piece of spoken word poetry. I then published it on my blog, and a reader commented that I should do an recording of the poem. Since I am currently in quarantine and “between jobs,” I was suddenly inspired today to do just that.

As I read through the poem the first several times, I nearly cried. It’s odd, or perhaps not so odd, how social issues do not disappear in 2 years. The poem, for me, is just as relevant as it was then. Perhaps even more so, in this day and age when as a white minority, we may try to express our understanding or sympathy for a minority group, only to be told that we have no way of understanding and that our sympathy is demeaning. Perhaps we understand more than we realize. Each person has pain, and each pain that person faces equips them to some degree to empathize with others.

I did struggle with the recording. It was extremely difficult, with my lack of equipment, to find a place where I could record without outside noises infringing on my voice. In the afternoon, it was the roosters. In the evening, it was the Tukae. I finally found a cardboard box and stuck my phone into it, and with my head halfway in, lay on the floor and recorded it. I feel like I would do better recording in front of an audience, where, as I heard one preacher say lately, they sort of draw the inspiration out of you.

But finally, I had to finish it, and be ok with it not being perfect.

Below is a link to the video.

Flame of God by Amy Carmichael

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From prayer that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher—
From silken self, O Captain, free
Thy soldier who would follow Thee.

From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings,
(Not thus are spirits fortified,
Not this way went the Crucified.)
From all that dims Thy Calvary,
O Lamb of God, deliver me.

Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay,
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire;
Let me not sink to be a clod—
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God!

When I read this poem, I feel like it needs no explanation. It’s a prayer in itself speaks deeply to my heart. The only thing I would like to add is that this used to be a poem that I prayed during some difficult spiritual times in my younger years, and re-reading it brings back so many memories as well as a reminder to not shrink from hard choices.

From subtle love of softening things….. from easy choices, weakenings…..

(as you may have noticed, I did not blog on Friday and Saturday. This was because of a trip to Chiang Mai for visa issues on Friday and then a day of catching up on other things. And processing some more developments. Because yes, I am in quarantine again.:) )

Little Brown Pony

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Little brown pony, oh, come with me

Down where the green grass grows by the lea

Down to the little brook that sings as it goes

And widens its path when swelled with snows.

Come, little pony, with me on a race

Running through the wheat fields with quickening pace;

Over the little swell, down through the draw,

Whoa, little pony, now whicker and paw!

Hold tight to the reins; little pony don’t run;

There’s green of the wheat field, gold of the sun!

Brown of the plowed earth, blue of the sky!

Turn around, turn around, little pony let’s fly!

Back through the wide field, on past the knoll

Down through the brown draw, tall grasses roll,

Back through the waves of ever-greening wheat,

Little brown pony has wings on her feet!

-Lori, April 2009

Every now and then I can write a poem that I look back and savor the imagery, because I managed to actually catch at least a fraction of what I saw and heard and felt. This is one of those few. Anyone who has experienced a Kansas spring and has ridden a spunky little pony in greening wheat fields should be able to relate.

I was about 9 years old when we got our first pony, Penny, after months or years of begging. She was a large, fat, copper pony with a mind of her own. She would be poky and slow upon leaving the farm, but as soon as you turned her around to go home again, her head would go up and it was all you could do to hang on as you went flying down the road. The one spring we let our cows out on pasture, so most evenings during that time, I would go bring them up for milking, riding Penny bareback. Springtime in Kansas is beautiful, green, and fresh. That was the inspiration for this poem.

This poem was first published in Echoes of Eternity.

Watchman

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Image by 12222786 from Pixabay 

Struggling with assurance of salvation was something very real that I wrestled with a lot as a teenager. This following poem was written at the age of 19 during a time I was facing some spiritual battles in that area. Today as I was looking at this poem again, I realized that while it was a relevant expression of my life then, with the current Covid/visa/lockdown/changes situation currently, I can also connect to it now as well. The poem is based off the verses in based on Isaiah 21:11, 12 and was published in my book, Echoes of Eternity.

Watchman

Watchman, watchman what of the night?

Tell me, can you see?

What thing awaits beyond the next wave

If horror or joy it be?

The sea is dark and dank is the foam

That roars as wave meets sky

The night is grim and unsteady my craft

And far from home am I

Watchman, watchman, what of the night?

When will the daylight break?

Over the sea foam when will the sun

Cast its brilliance over my wake?

Friend, take heed of thy steady light

Fall not away, oh fellowman!

Let not your light grow dim or failing

Or my faith will sink with the setting sun.

Watchman, watchman, what of the night?

Upon thy tower stay

Tossed and troubled and fearful am I

Who needs to be shown the way.

Stay on thy tower mid storm and gloom

Until breaks the morning light;

So that I, when I am steady and sure,

Can take thy place in the coming night.

November 7, 2009

In No Strange Land

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In No Strange Land – by Francis Thompson (Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay )

O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air—
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumour of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!—
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places;—
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
’Tis ye, ’tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry;—and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry,—clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

I was just 21 years old and a very intimidated, Amish student at Faith Builders Summer Term in 2011 when I first was introduced to this poem. I chose most of my summer term classes to build my teaching skills, but in addition to that I audited a course that turned out to be my favorite. It was called Poetry Appreciation, taught by a man called Jonas Sauder, who with his long beard and quiet unassuming way of speaking seemed a very safe person for this scared country girl. Jonas Sauder seemed to be a legend at Faith Builders. My friend Betty Yoder said that most people’s brains are either a mile deep and an inch wide, or an inch deep and a mile wide, but that Jonas Sauder’s brain was a mile deep and a mile wide.

I was mostly self-taught in what I knew of poetry. We had studied a little in grade school, and I had never attended high school. I had borrowed books on poetry at the library, and mostly just read poetry for the beauty of it, without analyzing it too deeply. So, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked into the class. If an intellectual like this was going to teach us poetry, then I was sure to flounder. But the class turned out to be exactly like it’s name, “Poetry Appreciation.” Jonas had a way of presenting the poetry that made it seem unthreatening, tangible and real. And appreciatable. If that could be a word.

It was a small class, but I can remember only about 3 names of the students. One of them was my friend Jen Miller, and there was a Titus who looked exactly like what I imagined some melancholy 18th century poet might look like, and a Jewel who read poetry with a voice that was poetry itself.

I looked forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays because I could go to this class. It seemed like a safe haven for me, a very homesick Kansas farm girl.

Then one day we read the poem, “In No Strange Land,” by Francis Thompson (who also wrote another favorite poem that I fell in love with at the age of 15, “The Hound of Heaven”). At first, the entire poem went over my head. I had no idea what it meant. Then, as we started looking at it closer, I grew to love it.

The entire poem is a paradox. In simple language, you might say, “The entire poem means that God and his angels are closer than what we realize.” Fish, in seeking the ocean, do not need to fly. Eagles, seeking air, do not need to come down to earth. So why do we constantly look for God in far away places instead of close to ourselves? If God could walk on the water in homely Galilee, what would stop him from bringing your lost cat back, or fixing your bad visa situation?

For me, the poem reminded me then that God was just as close in Intimidating Mennonite Educational Culture as he was in the in the barn where I scribbled down poetry on scrap paper while milking cows.

It reminds me of the verse in Acts 17 where Paul is talking with the Atheniens. He says, “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:  For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring” (Acts 17:26-28 KJV).

“Though he be not far from every one of us.” Perhaps there is more holiness in our everyday lives than we realized.

A Poem a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

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Image by Mariangela Castro (Mary) from Pixabay

I told some friends recently that I think I will no longer tell people what my plans are for the next day or week or the next month. This is because after I tell them one day, I need to retell them the next day because of the constant change of landscape these days.

Instead, I will tell them after it happens. Like last week when I actually did get the chance to make a quick trip to Saohin.

Ever since the beginning of April, life has been a pretty consistent roller coaster. If that combination of words can be put together. I just found out yesterday that I won’t start work for another three weeks. This is because of the current Covid situation in Thailand. Schools in Thailand won’t start until June 1st but until yesterday I was told that I would be working from home and perhaps doing some online teaching. Then yesterday I found out it would not be so.

So. Here I am in Mae Sariang with three weeks of “vacation” in front of me. I will be filling those weeks with some informal teaching, some teaching prep for the upcoming semester, maybe a trip to Chiang Mai or two for visa purposes and to move some items still there. Otherwise, I will be weeding out the orchard behind my new house and trying to figure out how to crack up the coconuts that fall from the tree. Church isn’t really happening currently because of the half-lockdown the town is in. Most of the fun evening markets are closed, and even national parks are closed. Many of the mountain villages (other than Saohin) have closed off their gates to outsiders.

La la la la la…..

So I am trying to find the best way to use my time wisely. Maybe I should do a week of fasting and praying. That would save money, at least, for sure. Maybe I could try building furniture from the bamboo beside the house. Or study Karen.

One thing that I have been rolling around in my mind lately is my recent lack of immersion in good, deep literature. I attribute this to several factors, one my focus on language study, two when in college and on my internship I lacked the energy and time to read deeply, and three, bad habits. One of my goals for this summer is to stretch my brain in relation to good, English literature.

So, with this in mind, I have decided for the next week to post a poem a day. This might be a poem that I have previously written and/or published, it might be a poem I have freshly written, or it might be a poem written by someone else that I enjoy, along with a bit of an explanation of what the poem means to me. I do not pretend to be a great poet, or a great poet analyst. I like poetry that makes me think, but does not make my brain do cartwheels to figure out what the author is driving at. But I do enjoy sharing poetry that is meaningful to me, as well as hearing poetry from others.

I plan to do this for a week, but if I see that its going well, I might stretch it out to two weeks. I also have been a bit traumatized (ok, that’s too strong a word but for lack of a better one) by the constant changes of plans, and so I feel a bit scared to commit to a poem a day FOR SURE. So, I will say, barring a sudden trip to Chiang Mai or Saohin, a storm and a subsequent blackout, the sudden rising of the creek (very literally if I do go to Saohin) or a wave of dengue fever or any other insurmountable obstacle, I will post a poem a day.

And I would love to hear thoughts on the poetry from my readers.

Here goes.

Of Quarantining and Cats

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Since I made the final move to town of Mae Sariang after finishing my internship in Saohin in the middle of April, I’ve spent the majority of my time in my house. This was mostly because of a third wave of Covid that spread over Thailand since the beginning of April. I spent a week in quarantine in after coming to Mae Sariang from Chiang Mai. This was the 4th time I’ve quarantined in my life (although two of those quarantines were less than 2 weeks long).

My house and I get along well, but there are times when you need something else besides a house and a Tukay to talk to. Even after getting out of quarantine, it’s been hard to feel like a part of life in Mae Sariang since the town is in a half-lockdown. I missed a friend’s wedding because of quarantine.  I keep in contact with the few friends I knew before I moved here, but it’s hard to make new friends with the level of social activity going on.  I was also feeling disappointed after giving up my trip to Saohin that I had been hoping to take on May 1. I felt like with the Covid situation the way it was and me not being back from Chiang Mai a full 14 days, as well as having been in contact with a Covid-infected person (although it was over 14 days by then) I simply didn’t feel comfortable with making the trip. While Saohin has not closed down, many mountain villages have shut off contact with the outside world.

When I had been up in Saohin on my internship, Kru Paeng had asked me if I wanted to take one of the cats when I left. Kru Paeng was moving to another school after the semester ended and she wasn’t going to be able to take the cats with her. At the time, I couldn’t commit to taking care of a cat since I was going to be traveling back and forth from Chiang Mai for part of March and part of April.

Last week I started thinking. I was now settled into my house, or getting there. I was tired of being by myself all the time. I was tired of talking just to the Tukay. I wanted something furry and warm and alive.

Why not see if I can get the cat down now, I wondered. I messaged Captain Joe since his police unit was coming down at the end of the month.

“If I get the children to catch the cat, can you bring it down or arrange for someone to bring it down?” I asked.

“Sure,” he replied. I messaged one of the children, but she obviously wasn’t able to connect to wifi since she never replied. I also messaged one of the teachers that had traveled up during break to take care of some things. And then I waited, wondering.

In the evening, Captain Joe messaged me saying they hadn’t found it yet, but the next morning he said he saw that Kru Taum had caught the cat. Kru Toon sent me a picture of the little gray cat. “Is this the one?” he asked. He stuck it in a bag and brought it to Captain Joe. Captain Joe put it in a box and wrote my number and name on it and gave it to Captain Chatri and P Boy to bring down to Mae Sariang.

I got a call in the evening that they had arrived and went to the police station to pick up my cat. As I expected, she was pretty upset. She had clawed a hole in the side of the box, so when P Boy put it on my bike, he put the hole on the top side so she couldn’t come out. I drove home, itching to turn around and see if a gray cat head was sticking out of the hole behind me, but I resisted the urge.

Kru Paeng had told me to keep her inside the house for a few days until she got used to her surroundings. “Take good care of her,” she said. Kru Paeng loves her cats a lot, and I knew I would feel very bad if something happened to her.  Before opening the box, I closed up all the windows, or at least partially since only two of them have screens on them.

The cat came out disturbed. And she stayed disturbed for most of the evening, to my chagrin. There were a few moments when I would hold her and she would be quiet, but for most of the night she prowled the house, mourning and meowing, while I tossed and turned in my bed, chasing elusive sleep.

I woke around 6:30 to a silent house. Good, she’s finally quiet, I thought, but I decided to get up and check anyway. A lumpy feeling of worry started in my throat as I started to check the house, and it had plummeted down to the bottom of my stomach by the time I was finished.

There was no cat in the house.

I investigated and found hairs between two of the glass panes by the porch window. I didn’t feel much pride in my investigative skills, however. I walked outside and called. No cat. I walked to the neighbors. House after house, I stopped and asked if they had seen her. House after house, they said no.

I came back home and cried. I used to cry over cats when I was 5 and still cried over them when I was 15. I guess I still cry over cats at 30.

I felt terrible. I thought of all the work that Captain Joe and the teachers and Captain Chatri and P Boy had gone to to bring the cat down. I thought of Kru Paeng and how much she loved her cats. I thought of how much I had been looking forward to having some furry, warm company.

I decided not to listen too much to the words of the people I talked with about the cat. Some were very blunt. “Oh, you’ll never see her again.” Some were more encouraging, yet I felt like they were only trying to make me feel good. “She’ll probably come back tonight. She’s just checking things out.”

I prayed. Oh yes, I prayed. But on a level of 1 to 10, my faith scored in at a 2 at the most. The disappointment was just too big. Being low on sleep didn’t help matters either. I never operate well on low sleep.

That afternoon, after running some errands and meeting up with some friends, I felt better. I decided to read some books on my kindle and relax a bit, but for the life of me, I could not find my kindle. One of the worst parts about living by yourself is that when you lose something, you automatically know that you were the only one who could have mislaid it. There is no subtle blaming of anyone else. Even worse, when you mislay your phone, there is no way to ask someone to call it so you can find it. And I lose things. A lot.

As I sat there, thinking I had searched every possible place it might be, I prayed. God, can you please just help me find this? Right after the prayer, the thought flashed through my mind. God doesn’t even care about bringing your cat back. Why should he care about your kindle?

Then I looked up and saw my kindle on the bookshelf in a slightly obscure spot where I had laid it while cleaning that morning.

It was an encouragement. Maybe God did care.

That evening I was sitting in my living room. I was getting more used to the idea of a catless future, because I didn’t really want to think about getting another animal after the first one ran away.

Suddenly I heard a slight noise at the door, a faint meow.

I got up and looked out.

And there she was, the little gray runaway cat.

I picked her up and sat down and did the next natural thing.

I thanked God. And I cried.

Home

ache, Adventure, culture, home, life on the foreign field, Poetry, writing, , , , , , , ,

The poem below was written in January 2009 at the age of 18. Or that’s the date I have on it, but I think I actually wrote the first draft a few months earlier in August of 2008. Recently, I opened up a copy of Echoes of Eternity, the first book of poems I published. I realized that few of my poems in that book had ever been published on my blog. Even though I feel like some of them fall below par (and I cringe when I see that), I also realize that there are some really good ones in the book. Also, there are a few that never really were good friends with me (for instance, they never seemed to quite say what I wanted them to say, or sound like I wanted them to sound) but when I returned to read them years later, I find that they are much better friends than I ever thought them to be. Below is one of those, called “Home,” mostly because ever since I left the village, homesickness has been harder.

Home

Someday I’ll travel all the world

And sail the oceans wide

I’ll climb the highest mount on earth

And row my boat against the tide

I’ll view the Alps of Switzerland

In their majesty unswayed–

Unless my little grain of faith

Reduce them trembling and afraid;

And yet I’ll still look back and see

That no matter where I go,

Near or far, wherever I roam

Across the broad world I know–

Still burn the lights of home.

I’d see them still, the lights of home,

Imprinted on my mind,

No matter how much Persian wealth

Or Yukon gold I’d find

They’d call me still and stay with me

Even as the Sphinx I’d view

I’d think of them as I’d kneel down

And wash my face in China’s dew.

If I could climb Mt. Everest,

Cling victorious to its peak-

Almost to touch the sky’s vast dome–

Still my eyes would ever seek

For the hearth fires of my home.

In Africa’s huts or Bedouin’s tents,

In the palaces of Spain,

In sunlight on the purple moor,

Or in the fog of London’s rain;

In the tropics of the south;

Or in the blinding Arctic snow,

My soul would always think of home

Beneath the elms and my heart would know

That whenever rejected by the world

Or saddened by its sin

Through the weeping rain, I’d gladly come

And always find rest within

The burning lights of home.

-January 10, 2009