The Inexorable Mountain of Impedimenta

Yesterday Hank and I had about 6 hours to ourselves to tackle The Inexorable Mountain of Impedimenta in the corner of our bedroom.  Thanks to Nana and our sweet friend Jessie, we were able to focus on sorting, organizing, and packing 446 pounds of everything from lip balm to lidocaine.  It was amazing how much we were able to accomplish without our 4 little helpers! 

 We are hoping that our scale is close to the airport's scale.  The night before our flight, we will go to the airport and weigh the bins to see if they agree that each one is under 50 pounds!

Lest you start to suspect us of over-packing frivolous paraphernalia, I would like to draw attention to the plastic grocery bag in front of Hank's knee.  In that little bag is about 80% of the clothing I am taking for myself for 3 1/2 weeks. Am I absolved?

Thanks to the Bombay Bicycle Club station on Pandora, some nourishing chocolate-covered raisins (also courtesy of Nana), and enough excitement to propel us at least halfway across the Atlantic, we overcame The Mountain!

"Can we stop finding holiness in poverty?"

I traveled to Pakistan when I was 17, and there I was soberly confronted with profound poverty and some of its many ugly effects.  I have seen varying degrees of poverty since then, and it's never pretty.

"But they are just so happy, even though they are poor."  Have you ever heard this, or said it? I think sometimes we mistake the beauty of a human being created in God's image as happy or full of joy, simply because we are incapable of interpreting his or her smile any other way. 

I came across this blog post this morning.  I'm supposed to be getting myself and my kids ready to head out the door with lunch boxes and notebooks and rain boots and my second cup of chai, but instead I'm finding these words that so deeply resonate and I have to share them. 

Can we stop saying, "They are poor, but they are happy"?

Desperation can lead to evil and abuse and depravity. There is nothing inherent about poverty that makes people holy or noble. However, there is incredible nobility in how certain people bear their poverty, a holiness in how they interact with others. We need to see what is there and not what we want to project. If the poor are noble or holy in their suffering, the wealthy can be relieved of an urgent need to examine our own complicity and apathy.

Poor but Happy
This article on Humanosphere found that in sub-Saharan Africa among those stuck in poverty, their happiness index was far below those in wealthy countries. Poverty is not just the lack of wads of cash. It is the lack of options, choices, autonomy. It often means disease, children dying young, lack of education, illiteracy, hunger, hard labor, oppression. I don’t know many people in these circumstances for whom ‘happy’ is the primary appropriate adjective. This is intensely not hypothetical for me, I know a lot of people in these circumstances.

Denying that inequality is problematic, based on happiness being important and the poor being happy, offers a pretext for not thinking more deeply about the impacts of inequality. Anna Barford 

If the poor are so happy, that alleviates some of the rich person’s guilt. The wealthy outsider can praise their good attitudes, their thankfulness, they can categorize their smiles in the face of dire circumstances as evidence of happiness. And in doing so, they remove the burden of guilt, complicity, and the pressure to act. The also remove the poor person’s natural human ability to feel complex emotions, happiness being one of the most simplistic emotions there is.

blog by Rachel Pieh Jones

Fine on the Outside

I wrote last year about carrying on with a smile even when things aren't going exactly the way I'd like.  I call it "fake it 'till you make it," and there is definitely a time and place for it.  But the last few weeks I've been uncovering some areas that I've been ignoring in my life, initiated by our Sonship homework. 

I came across this quote in one of our reading assignments, and it got my attention.

“A sham spirituality of pseudo-repentance and pseudo-bliss eventually fashions what modern psychiatry calls a borderline personality, in which appearances make up for reality.”

 

 I know there is a balance somewhere in learning to be real with people and yet not sharing the depths of my heart with the grocery checker when she asks “how are you?”  Am I closing off so much of myself to others that I'm depending on appearance to make up for reality?  

 

So I have been trying to answer these questions for the past few weeks, digging down deep and finding shaky walls I have propped up to "protect" myself from others. 

 

Lucky for you, I just so happen to have some Willis family dirt on the matter to illustrate my point.

 

No, really.  I'm about to share with you some slimy, slick, deep, unforgiving mud. 

 

Are you ready?  Driving up to our house, you would never realize this (and we didn't either until a couple days ago).  It really reinforces the advice to deal with your problems while they are little. 

 

Are you still reading? 

 

So. 
We started draining the pond today via a secondary pipe so we can access the leak under the culvert and repair the damage under the road.

And I've been working on my heart as well. 

Three more Saturdays

After today, we just have three more Saturdays before we leave.  I guess it's time to get serious about packing!  This is one of those situations where procrastinating until the night before isn't going to cut it. 

 
Part of the plan is to carry these backpacks instead of suitcases for our clothes and toiletries, etc.  We will be spending 2 days in Brussels on our return trip, and anyone who has ever rolled a wheelie suitcase down European cobblestone streets knows that there is a better way.  I don't know how many cobblestones we will come across in Brussels, but we'll be prepared either way.

 

These, of course, are the adult backpacks.  Henry will probably have our smallest pack like this, and the other three will have their small school packs for carrying a snack, water, and headphones for traveling.  Eika might also be in charge of a dvd player and the dvds.

 

All the extra things we are bringing for the hospital and our friends will be in these bins.  It looks like we will have 7 or 8 of these.  Here, Eika is drilling holes for zip ties. 

 

For each thing we cross off, a few more things appear on our "list of things to do before we leave."  We are getting so excited!

Sister Salon

The number one question I am asked about my brown-skinned beauty is whether or not I do her hair myself.  Up until yesterday, I could always say yes.  I have learned so much since I first put little bows in her silky infant wisps, and I know that I still have at least that much more to learn!  Thankfully, her big sister loves to play beauty salon, and she enjoys helping me braid sometimes.  This time though, she did a lot more than helping.  I had taken out braids Sunday and Monday and it was time to deep condition, detangle, and part into twists. Eika was on the job! 

 

First she used the amazing Wet Brush on sopping wet, conditioner-saturated hair.  We started at the sink, but halfway through we moved to the bathtub.  Working together, it took the two of us about 20 minutes to brush through her hair section by section. 

After gently towel drying, we moved to the living room and started a movie.  I showed Eika how to do the parting, and away she went. 

 Eika worked by herself for about an hour and got half of Eva's hair in what we call bunti buns.  I'm not sure how and when we started calling them that, since I think the real name is Bantu knots.  

I took over and parted and twisted the other half, which finished up pretty quickly (40 minutes, maybe).  Here is the happy girl!  There is always a big smile when we are DONE!

We will leave these in for a couple of days, and then we'll undo the twists without combing or brushing to have a bouncy, curly "twist-out." 

Hooray for a hair apprentice!  Nice work, Eika!