Tag Archives: homesick

Delta 7850/KE36

ache, home, life on the foreign field, Poetry, travel, , , , , , , , , , ,

Somewhere between Atlanta and Seoul I lost half a day.

I think it slipped out into the great infinity of sky– time leaking into the clouds, an hour here, an hour there,

The minutes dripping down like condensation pooling together onto the cumulonimbus floor of the sky, the seconds wisping into cloud dust.

I know they’ve tried to tell me many times how time works on international flights, but my mind cannot understand.

Perhaps the hours and the minutes and the seconds all find each other again, like a diaspora coming home, and quietly rain back down on my life later.

Or maybe those twelve hours are stored up somewhere in one of God’s bathroom cabinets behind where He keeps the vitamins in the same place he puts the tears that watered those lost minutes,

Lost minutes that ached of goodbyes, and pain that my hands cannot touch or heal no matter how much I long to span them around all the problems, and heal the hunger of hurting souls and the seduction of spiderwebbed thoughts.

Perhaps he mixes the lost minutes with the tears where they crystalize into jewels in the bottle marked with my name in the bathroom cabinet of God’s house where they wait for sometime when they are redeemed and I dare to clasp my hands around them and learn they were never really lost.

Perhaps so.

When I See You Again

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There are some things about heaven I don’t understand

But some things I know to be true

That I will meet God when I get there

And that I will run races with you;

Maybe we’ll run to the green, green meadows

Tasting the fresh, clean air

Or walk by the river and talk of old times

And catch the bright butterflies there.

I know they say that you’ve gone far away

But I think it’s just through that door

That door where the shadows have been chased out of sight

Right beside the long river’s shore.

And it won’t be long till I see you again

Just a sunset and sunrise away

So, wait for me there on the edge of the water

Where the dawn of heaven breaks into day.

My Aunt Miriam passed away a few days ago from a 4 year long battle with cancer. Miriam had lived with my grandpa in the house next door for the past 10 years or so. Miriam contracted polio at a young age, so she always wore a brace for walking, and in later years, a walker as well. When I would go home for visits from Thailand, one thing I really enjoyed doing was going with her to her doctor and chemo visits. I look forward to running races with her in heaven.

Where the South Wind Blows

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Oh, give me the gray autumn winds of Kansas

That steal across the burnt sienna of tallgrass,

Down over rolling plains, close by the Ninnescah,

In November, in November, in gray November’s day.

I wonder if they would know me, those November winds

That ghost from river to prairie to grove,

Where dying Texas sunflowers await the dawning winter,

And Osage orange trees pencil black against the sky.

Oh, give me gray winds haunting shorn fields

And over the umber colors of the riverland grass,

When the sky cups over the brooding prairie world

On a day in November where the south wind dwells.

Heritage

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And when the mists come tonight they are not unlike my thoughts.

They come, tendrilling and gray, untouchable,

Yet stirring the ache, the echo of that music unheard.  

I wonder at my own sorrow, and the sorrows the world

Has bequeathed upon me

Unasked.

For I am a dust child, born of the earth.

I wonder if Esther wept in the palace halls

If Bath-sheba ever forgot the little man child who was no more

And if Eve lay awake, in pain, counting the stars,

The stars that were so far, far away.

Image by bernswaelz from Pixabay 

Late Winter Night

Adventure, home, Poetry, , , , , , , ,

Tonight, I was reading a few lines of Sara Teasdale’s in her volume of poems, Flame and Shadow. Her poems are always alight with vivid imagery, often of nature, and the few lines I read tonightabout night falling made me terribly homesick. Homesick for dusk at home, twilight in early soft June summers, or wintry landscapes and sunsets on snow.

Which in turn, both homesickness and poetry about the later parts of the day, made me think of a poem that I wrote when I was 17. This poem is not like Sara Teasdale’s poems in any way, but it always stirs a warm memory inside of me of late winter nights and a memory of my favorite thing to do as a child on those late winter nights: read in bed late into the night. (Come to think of it, it is one of my favorite things to do as an adult.)

The worst thing about reading in bed late at night was the fact that I did not have a lamp beside my bed. Why not, I am not sure, because I remember one year most of us got lamps for a Christmas present, but at the time I wrote this poem I lacked a lamp.

This meant that someone had to get out of bed and turn off the light before it was possible to go to sleep.

 Now, when you turn off the light as soon as you get up the stairs and then crawl into bed, there is no drama involved at all. But if you have been reading for hours, engrossed in your book in which you have just finished off the story of Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles, or perhaps White Fang, or The Prophet, or At the End of the Spear, it is impossible for a young (or old) person with a fertile imagination to turn off the light in an ordinary fashion. For one, someone might have sneaked in under the bed while you were busy reading. Or, something, who knows what, might be waiting out there in the hall just as you reach the light switch…. really so many things could go wrong.

If my sister and I were sleeping in the same bed, then an argument would follow about who should turn off the light, and it usually turned out that the one sleeping closest to the light switch would turn it off, if nothing else for personal safety reasons since having the other person do it would mean that person could easily land on you on the expedited return trip.

But it was worse when you were sleeping by yourself. There was no moral support or expectation of a warm, living human being lying in the bed when you returned from the turning-off-of-the-light. All the worse if there would be.

So, this poem was born.

Late Winter Night

It’s late winter night

And the snow is falling

 Brushing over barren trees,

The night winds calling.

Inside the fire’s warm

And I’m snug in my bed

Curled up with a book

The covers to my head;

Lost in a story

Or buried in a rhyme

The hour has grown very late

But I’ve forgotten the time.

The clock strikes again

 And it’s time to say good night

 It’s time to put my book away

 Oh! But what about the light?

It’s only five feet away

 But might as well be a mile

Even though the way I do it

Takes just a little while;

So many terrible things

 Coud happen as I go

Like hands that grab for my feet

Or pinch my little toe.

Or after everything is dark

When I’ve turned out the light

Suppose I made a jump for bed

And didn’t aim quite right?

 So many things could go wrong

 But the thing must be done

 So, I gather up my courage

And out of bed I run!

Take a leap! Switch off the light!

Come diving into bed!

Snuggle down into the depths

Pull the covers over my head

Take a breath and check around–

I think- I think – I’m in one piece still

Even though I stubbed my toe

 And hit the windowsill;

 And then I curl up in a ball

And wrap the overs tight

Sleep is coming, I’m drifting out

 Oh, late, late winter night!

-January 2008

From Echoes of Eternity

Mommi

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My grandma is old.

She has always been old, to me.

I remember going to her house one day when I was 4. My mom was going to Hutch. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to go to my grandma’s house, or Mommi’s house, and play with the Berenstein bears in the log cabin that Doddi built.

She was old already, back then.

She was already old when Doddi died from complications from open heart surgery when I was 9.

She was old when I went to Thailand the first time over 8 years ago. And she has been getting older every time I come home again.

And each time I leave, I say goodbye for the last time.

Every time I see her, she is a little bit smaller, a little bit whiter, and a little bit thinner. But she is always, always as sweet and kind as ever. This last time is like that, when I go home for my visit.

My grandma is old. She has always been old, but now she is older than ever. She is 100 years old. She sleeps on a hospital bed and eats her meals from her chair. My mom and my aunts take turns staying with her every night and day.

One time I stay with her so that Mom can go to her cousin’s garage sale. I read from the Budget at the top of my lungs until Mommi has pity on me and tells me I can stop. Then I read through some of the 200 cards she received on her 100th birthday until Mom comes back to stay with her for the night.

She is starting to forget things, which is painful to watch, not so much because she is becoming forgetful, as would be expected for a woman of 100, but because she realizes that her sharp mind is not quite as sharp anymore and it bothers her. So, I try not to ask her too many questions about something that she might not remember well.

I give her a small handbag made by a team of ladies in Thailand. She is delighted with it, and keeps on commenting about it and saying thank you. “It’s so pretty that I won’t want to take it anywhere for fear something will happen to it,” she says. A minute later, she remembers and says almost apologetically, “Well, I don’t go anywhere anyway anymore.”

On my last day at home, I go over in the rainy evening to say goodbye. She is sitting on her brown chair with the colorful orange and brown afghan, eating her supper. Dorothy is there with her for the night. I sit down and we chat for a while before I say goodbye.

She is smaller than ever. I give her a hug and hold her hand for a bit, and then leave before the tears can burst from the floodgates.

The last I see her is as I drive past. Dorothy is waving, and so is Mommi, a thin white hand from the window.

I am glad for the rain streaming down the windshield.

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.

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

My Love Affair with Airports*

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You and I, it’s

Complicated.

 

There’s nothing like the way I feel when I hear your voice

The way it makes my stomach quiver,

The way I love how you wrap your arms around me,

And the way I feel lost in you.

We’ve loved each other for a long time;

But…. it’s complicated.

 

I remember the first day I met you

Me, a farm girl from Kansas on her first flight, giddy, naïve, excited

When I jumped past the “authorized personnel only” sign to rescue my bag

From where it was headed into the unknown

And they shouted at me.

That’s when we first met, you and I.

Me, the farm girl with starry eyes who fell hard for you,

You–so much older than me, the one who had seen every kind of person in the world

Who had traveled to the four corners of the earth

I fell for you then, and I’ve loved you since

 

I fell in love with the way you whispered poetry in my ear

Of places you wanted to take me

Things you wanted to show me

Languages you wanted me to hear

People you wanted me to meet

And I’ve been in love ever since.

But…. it’s complicated.

 

I love the way you’re always alive and moving.

The way your heart beats late at night

When I put my ear on your chest

And listen to the sound of your dreams throbbing

The way Boeing 747’s do going down the runway.

I love the way you inspire me to dream,

To wander, to explore

To go where no one else has gone before.

I love the way I see every color in you;

And how every language under the sun

Rolls alive and rich on your tongue;

And when I hear you say the words

โปรดทราบ เครื่องของสายการบิน Air Asia เที่ยวบินที่ FD 3113

พร้อมแล้วที่จะออกเดินทางไปเชียงใหม่

ขอเรียนเชินผู่ด้วยสารทุกท่านขึ้นเครื่องได้ ณ ทางออกหมายเลกสอง

ขอบคุณค่ะ **

I thrill. No one speaks to my heart like you do.

And yet… it’s so complicated.

 

I love you, but every time I see you,

You rip me away from others I love,

Tearing like the tabs tearing from boarding passes at the gate.

You make me feel at home,

Yet you take me away from home and then tease me with memories of home in the eyes of the little blonde boy sitting in front of me at Gate 29

You bring me to places that stamp themselves onto my heart

Then you block them off from me

Like visas denied at the last minute.

You send me friends that become a part of me

Then break them away while my heart crumbles

Like the hard cookies on the flight to Shanghai.

You broaden my horizons and leave me in awe

And then collapse them  like my luggage does after I’ve unpacked everything from it

You teach me things I never knew

Then change it all up, so I’m confused and can’t find my way

As if I were lost in Suvarnabhumi all over again.

And everywhere I go with you, you always, always make me pay

In tears

That are wrenched from a heart that wonders

Why I let someone do this to me

Can you see why I love you

And why I hate you?

It’s just…. complicated

 

But you’ve seen me at my lowest, my worst,

When I’ve been awake for 24 hours,

And smell like a pair of socks that were packed dirty

And left through two missed flights

While their owner slept on the hard floor.

You’ve taken me with all my baggage and dug around in it

Found all my dirty secrets, and let me into your heart anyway.

You’ve wrapped your arms around me while I sat crying

On the row of seats waiting for AA 2828 to leave Wichita

You’ve seen me alone and lonely in the masses

Yet, I feel at home when I am with you.

 

You enraptured me in Doha, where you were so quiet I too became silent

In Shanghai you taught me the beauty of doing nothing

You forced me to drink all the water in my bottle in Seoul in 25 seconds

I spent the night with you in Chicago while the snow fell and cold seeped into my bones

In Guangzhou we fought over the price of chocolate-covered blueberries

And in Bangkok I watched you, dazzled at the hundreds of different faces of you

I’ve drunk coffee with you in Tokyo, in Dallas, in Wichita

And held hands with you in Ho Chin Minh City.

In Chiang Mai you brought hundreds of people into my life—and then took them away again.

I lost my heart to you in Kunming and in Phnom Penh and in Calcutta

And when I bussed back from Laos

Every bone in my body ached from missing you.

 

And yeah, you’ve messed up.

You’ve kept me waiting and waiting without an answer

You’ve gone back on promises, let other things come first

You turned a cold shoulder to me that night in Chicago

When I was freezing and no matter how many blankets I wrapped around myself, my heart was so cold.

I lost my trust in you when you made me pay an arm and a leg

For those dumplings in China when I was starving

And I will never forget the regret that filled my heart

In O’Hara when you took that $4 chocolate chip cookie from me

While I was distracted by you….

It still haunts me

You’re just…. complicated

 

And yet, I keep on coming back to you

Over and over again.

Even when you take people from me, people I love

I love you even when I have to pay thousands of dollars just to see you

And you keep breaking my heart over and over.

I love getting lost in your embrace,

Tasting all you have to offer

Watching the grace of your movements and the vibrancy of your color

 

I love us.

Even though…

We’re complicated.

 

*This is Slam Poetry (recycled homework again) something I did for my Advanced Oral Communications class. To listen to the performance, check out this link: my love affair with airports

**This is Thai writing meaning  this: Attention please. Air Asia Flight FD 3113 to Chiang Mai is now boarding at Gate # 2. Thank you.

 

Trust

ache, life on the foreign field, love, , , , , , , , , , ,

“Just pray that I could learn to trust God more.”

I’ve heard these words several times from friends in sharing and prayer times.  And in those times, I wondered, what is it that they are trusting God for? I mean, why would it be so hard to trust God?

It sounds vague and like something you ask prayer for because you don’t know what else to say. Can’t you get more original than that?

But recently, I got it. Oh yes, I got it. I know exactly what they mean.

I’ve learned that I haven’t really been trusting God at all. Instead I have been living life with clenched fists, holding on to dreams, holding on to all that I want, refusing to give it up to God. I thought that because I wanted things so desperately, I couldn’t let go. I tried manipulation, I tried mind numbing tactics. I crawled into holes and desperately cried out to God, screaming and shouting in my mind.

And what He answered, at first I didn’t want to hear.

He said, “Trust.”

Trust? Really God? You can’t get more original than that?

When the noise in my mind died away, though, and I could think clearly again, I begin to see it.

If I trust, it means that I really believe that God is good and that He has good in store for me. But it may not look like my ideas of what is good.

It means I don’t look back and believe that the best years of my life are over, but instead, he has things in store beyond what I could ever think or imagine— for my good and His glory.

It means that when inside is raw and throbbing from the sting of salty tears on a too-sensitive heart that wants so much, I can trust that God is bigger than my heart and knows all things, which means He is perfectly capable of taking care of this heart, no matter how wayward, imperfect, and naive it may be.

It means when I crawl into my hole, I can trust that He sees every single tear that drops and He cares. And He is not too big to crawl into the hole with me.

It means that when He asks me to give something up, it is because what He has in mind is ultimately better and more beautiful, even if I can’t see it. I can believe it because I know who He is.

It means that when I think of all the people that I am going to miss in the next four months as one by one they leave this side of the world, He is going to be standing next to me at the airport or wherever my last glimpse of them may be, with His arms around my shoulders.

It means that when I feel like I just can’t handle this anymore, that I want to go home and live a “normal” life, He will be with me. Perhaps He won’t speak. But He will be there.

It means I can trust that whenever I am in situations where my tongue and my brain simply don’t feel like they can defend what my heart believes, He will give me words and wisdom.

It means that He is enough. It means that when others don’t see me or understand me, He does.

It means that He will satisfy the longing soul and will fill the hungry soul with goodness. Like He promised tonight.

Always. Yesterday, today and forever.

We pray for blessings
We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love is way too much to give us lesser things

‘Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You’re near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

We pray for wisdom
Your voice to hear
We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt your goodness, we doubt your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough

All the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we’d have faith to believe

When friends betray us
When darkness seems to win
We know that pain reminds this heart
That this is not our home

What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
What if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are your mercies in disguise

Songwriters: Laura Story
Blessings lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group