This same time, years previous: how to bake pies on the stove top

Sorry to leave you hanging there. I sort of dropped a bomb and then wandered off.

Things are moving along in fits and starts. Some days it feels like this trip is the most preposterous thing we have ever done and other days it feels perfectly rational. I expect I’ll continue to fluctuate between the two feelings for like, oh say, the next twelve months or so.

Most of the time, my head is spinning. Perhaps you’d like to see my brain’s transcript? Here, take a peek:

TwomonthstillweleaveEEK.Howwillwegeteverythingdone.VACCINES!Mustcleanouttheclosets
andWEHAVENOSUITCASES!WHEREWILLWEGETSUITCASES!andtheatticeWEMUSTEATUP
ALLOURFOODRIGHTNOW!anddigthroughallthewinterclothesandfindanoldcomputertotake
andDEALWITHTHEKIDS’ANXIETYandfindinsuranceandgetrentersand—

Good grief. What in the world are we thinking? We can’t even drive to town without the kids about killing each other. How in the world are we going to take a trip to another country? Clearly, we are insane.

Also, we are so, so happy.

Crazy happy, that’s us. Just go with it.

As things stand now, my husband and I are slated to be the Vocational Arts Facilitators at Bezaleel School, a boarding school for K’ekchi’ Indians. My husband will teach carpentry and do maintenance for the school. I will do things involving literacy, working with women, maybe cooking. We will have a house. The kids will participate in a lot of what we do and continue their homeschool studies. They’ll either learn Spanish … or K’ekchi’ (which would be really bad because then we wouldn’t be able to understand them).

The school is located five hours north of Guatemala city, in the highlands. It will be cold and rainy for the first part of the year, and there is no heat. The people are very tiny, reserved, and shy. We will not stand out at all, I am sure. Not at all.

Now, for the back story

Six weeks ago I was sitting in a sunny spot on the deck, chatting on the phone with my friend. We were discussing life and kids and Stuff In General and in passing she mentioned a job description she spotted on the MCC website. While we were still talking, I moved inside to look it up on the computer. And then I got so excited that I had to hang up the phone.

I called a friend and neighbor who just so happens to be an MCC Person Who Knows A Lot. “Is this crazy?” I asked. “They are asking for one person for this job. They wouldn’t take a family of six, would they?”

“Apply,” she said.

I started filling out the forms before I told my husband, and by bedtime that night, we had submitted our resumes and letters of inquiry. (For the record, we have a history of moving fast. Our engagement lasted all of seven and a half weeks, and we put an offer on our current house only a few hours after my husband had walked through it—I had never even seen it.)

“There is no way they’ll take us,” my husband kept muttering. “Six people? No way!”

I was inclined to agree with him. It seemed pretty farfetched.

A couple days later I cornered him in the back hall. “Suppose they say yes. Would you want to go?”

“Isn’t that a question you should’ve asked at the beginning?”

“Yeah, probably. And your answer would be…?”

“Yes, sure. But they’re not going to take us. It’s crazy.”

The “no” we expected to hear never came. Instead, our emails with MCC got longer and more involved. Friends who knew Stuff About This Sort Of Thing said that it was time for us to form a support team. We needed to quietly move ahead.

About a month into it (read, a month of tongue-biting, hand-wringing, nerve-wracking waiting, waiting, waiting), we got a call from headquarters. “Would it work to do a conference call this afternoon? Between you and us and the MCC reps in Guatemala?”

So that afternoon, instead of rest time, I set the kids up in the bedroom with a movie. My husband came home and we reviewed the list of questions I had written up. And then we sat at the kitchen table and waited. The appointed time came and went. When the phone rang, we both jumped, just like in the movies, and looked at each other, panicked. “Answer it!” my husband hissed.

The details are still not all worked out, and of course nothing is for certain until it happens, but things are now moving forward rapidly. The job description is being revamped. We met with potential renters last Sunday. Last week we applied for passports. Today we shared the news with the church.

There is so much more to this story, especially how we feel about it. There are Whys and What Fors and Hows that I have not even touched on. I imagine that as this becomes less News and more A Part of Our Lives, these bits and pieces will be incorporated into our story. The full picture will gradually be revealed—I expect it will be full of bright, splashy colors with some grays and dark shadows, too. Because no undertaking such as this is ever easy.

(And for those of you worried about whether or not I will continue to blog: I hear there is internet access where we will be, so yes, yes, yes!)

This same time, years previous: under the grape arbor, applesauce cake, garden inventory 2009, pizza with curried pumpkin sauce, sausage, and apples

These last few days, the garden has been transformed into the kids’ playground.

It’s where the kids go to play, every day, and sometimes for hours—glorious hours!—on end.

First they built a stream. Then they added ponds, bridges, tunnels, and dams. They built a red beet island and an asparagus woods. They planted flowers. They made leaf houses and floated Lego men.

Some of my favorite happy-play memories involve large tree roots and matchbox cars, icy-cold swamps, wet sand and pincher bugs. There’s something primal about playing with the elements. It’s satisfying and peaceful, and—pun intended, forgive me—grounding.

When they are in the garden, the children are
focused. Their imaginations are fully alive and engaged. They are using
only the most basic of play things: dirt, rocks, water, sticks. The
game doesn’t end—it only expands. And (this is very important) they are out of my hair.

For my
children, an activity that is cooperative, sustained, and calm is very rare indeed. I’m milking it for all it’s worth, believe you me.

My husband, on the other hand, is a bit stressed by their game. He worries that when he tills up the garden he’ll hit bits of PVC pipe and bricks and tear up the tiller tines. He frets that tools will get misplaced or broken. He fusses about the ground getting packed down hard as rock. He has a point.

But so do I. “Honey,” I say, “The kids are happy. They are playing. This is the best part of childhood right here, right now. You can’t say no.”

And so he doesn’t, of course. I’m good at making points.

Every time I go out to the garden, I take my camera with me. There is always something new.

Yesterday afternoon when I went out, I noticed that the ground over the tunnels had been turned into rock-lined causeways. This gave me an idea.

“You guys should build Tikal,” I said. “Make the towers and the plaza.”

We’ve been reading about the Maya ruins in preparation for our trip. (I have so much to tell you, squeal!) We’ll be about five hours from Tikal, and we’ve already told the kids that we’ll go visit.

A few hours later when I went out to check on them, there was Tikal in all its glory. My older daughter was in the final stages of adding the prayer room to the very top of her tower.

In case you were wondering, I don’t let the children run the water the whole time, but I am more generous than normal. What with the buckets of rain coming next week, I’m not too concerned about the well running dry any time soon.

This same time, years previous: sweet potato pie, the morning kitchen, signs, news, and daydreams