The Art of Staying

Within a week of moving into our home in Warsaw I bought three small philodendrons.  I think they each cost the equivalent of $1.25.  They were tiny, spindly things—each with just one hopeful leaf to its name.  I ostensibly chose them because I wanted to enlist a few natural air purifiers early on to ward against the coal laden winter air I knew was coming.  Also, experience has taught me that philodendrons are impervious to my almost pathological inability to keep plants alive.  But the real reason I carted these minute green packages of possibility home is that I knew they would make our house, still squeaky with all its newness, feel like our own.  I envisioned a day when those leaves would flourish and proliferate until I would be stringing the reaching vines across the waiting expanse of our bedroom walls.

It was an act of faith.  In three tiny plants I could cup in my hand I envisioned a wall of green marking the growth since we’d arrived.  It was an inspiring prospect in those early days when our energy was consumed by the tumult of discovering a new country.  The only trouble is that when I reached that triumphant moment when the vines were cascading from their pots, begging to be strung across the walls, I could not quite muster the energy to hang the hooks to support their sprawling growth.  By then we had only nine months left in the country and it just didn’t feel worth the effort.  The next time I tried to talk myself into the project we were down to seven months.  When we left Warsaw the vines remained a tangled mass in their now much bigger pots, never having achieved their wall spanning potential.

Now, eight years later, I am facing a similar predicament.  Not in the horticultural particulars, but in the conundrum of the soul.  We are barreling through our third year here in Madagascar and I am trying to summon the energy to remain engaged.  You see, moving comes naturally to me.  Sure, it’s all kinds of work and when I’m in the middle of it, I swear I’ll never do it again.  But I recognize that it is also energy-giving: the anticipating, the planning, the discovery.  It is the fuel on which my curiosity has fed for most of my life.

It’s the act of staying that takes some practice for me.  When we got that first three year assignment to Warsaw, we celebrated the idea of three consecutive years in one place.  Luxuriated in it, even.  We envisioned all the expansion and growth available thanks to all that uninterrupted time unfurling before us.  And we weren’t wrong.  Three years in one country did allow us to go deeper and explore further.  We came to know Poland in a way that was more profound than any of our previous adopted homes.  It’s just that the day to day of all that unfurling can be a bit tedious.

At the beginning of each new home we adopt, I’m primed to see all that could be.  I start imagining all that I’ll accomplish, experience, and create.  As the time dwindles I start to see only limitations.  I have to fight against the tendency to view everything and everyone in terms of return on investment of time.

It is easy to let the habit of exploration slip from my days in favor of well worn ruts.  Dear friends move away and I struggle to find the emotional reserves to be truly open to new relationships.  Things in the house get a bit ratty at the end.  That painting we bought on a trip that has nowhere to hang, the piles of books that don’t quite fit on the shelves, and the cabinet that has fallen into disarray are all tempting to ignore.  It is so easy to give into the draw to close down shop and hunker down for the last year.

Starting our third year in every country—no matter how much I love that country—takes a bit of grit for me.  I can see the tendency to mentally move on creeping in now.  I am feeling the squirrelly energy that propels me to try somewhere new.  Our time here is aging, like peeling wallpaper.  After the rush of a new discovery around every corner, it takes a different set of muscles to persevere.   

This, then, is the work of my days now.  To travel the same paths but with new eyes.  To continue to experiment, discover and approach the country where I live with curiosity.  To begin new relationships not as though they have an expiration date.  I have to trust in the wisdom of spiffing up a room, having lunch with a new acquaintance, or planning a trip to a new corner of the country.  This is a different kind of faith—to believe that this last year can enrich our whole experience here as much as the first did.