There's is a new baby in my family and I've never had a baby as family so naturally it's all I can be excited about in this long lasting moment of leaving Portland. I'm sitting on my floor that is empty of anything that would make our place comfortable, and cluttered with all things that make it look like we still have a long way to go until we are done packing.
Things are going so well with leaving. Why am I always so surprised and relatively ungrateful for when all things seem to go together so well? I guess if I had a profound answer to that question than this would be a blog worth reading.
The other night I was hanging out with Beall and Joy. I had borrowed a kitten for the night who belongs to my student Becky. If we weren't moving I would go to great lengths to keep him. He is orange and striped and I would even cut a hole in our garage door for him to go in and out if that was necessary. Becky let me name him and so I decided on something South African so she would remember what I had taught her about injustice. I named him Nelson Mandela. Mandela was falling asleep standing up. It was so funny that we were laughing very hard and there was a general happiness about having the heater on and the record player going that we were surprised when we noticed Beall's laughter had turned into crying. It struck me that there is quite a fine line between laughing very hard and crying. The emotional release of both is significant. For Beall, she was caught in a moment of realizing the immense beauty of our friendships and could see that soon they would be changing for a long time.
Consider the last time you cried hard. I know mine and I was alone so I didn't have to worry about the redness, puffyness, gaspingness, etc. and it was an important time for me of mourning the fact that I was leaving students who had come to depend on me. I supposed I had come to depend on them as well, why else would I be so sad?
I love hard laughter. Consider the last time you laughed so hard you had your specific hard laughing side effects (watery eyes, pain in your side, snorting, etc.) The collective value of moments like that with people you are close to is one of the good gifts coming down from our Father of heavenly lights.
