Domestic Days

In between churches and road trips, we have assembled a bit of temporary life here in Virginia.  My old bedroom, cluttered now with all our personal papers, books, clothes, computers, a card table for Scott's desk and TV tray for mine .  .  . the rest of my mom's house is unerringly neat, so I'm not sure how I failed to emulate that, but this room is scattered.  Mornings at the dining room table coaching Jack and Julia through Geometry, vocab and grammar.  Highlight of my day is figuring out a formula for how many discreet areas 100 intersecting coplanar lines will create, and then trying to explain it.  Or finding a latin root cross-over in a mathematical term.  Afternoons in the car, doing the traditional Northern-Virginia-Mom thing, driving to soccer practices (now extras since both kids made all-star, and never at the same time or same day), music lessons.  Thankful that this little period of a couple of months can be a time to launch my youngest two with opportunities the older two missed:  clarinet for Julia, drums for Jack, piano for both, hopefully enough to get them started in case they want to keep on with it in Kenya.  Library runs for books. Pulling from the abundance in the fridge, strawberries any day of the year, unlimited salads.  Seeing deer cross the back yard.  Trying to squeeze in some medical study/updating time.  Trying to get Caleb on the phone (success yesterday!  Hooray!  miss him so much).  Posting support letters and sending out our video to those we can't personally reach.  Maintaining life, no glamor, just plugging on.

Scott in the meantime spends a lot more forward-focused time.  After weeks of email exchanges the import taxes on a new vehicle to Kenya have just proven prohibitive.  As the American economy falters and our support account sputters, we scale back expectations, which feels right.  Downwardly mobile missionaries.  Find out we're moving into the same small duplex housing at Kijabe where we stayed for about six months post-ADF when Jack was born!  Will be a bit tighter with three teens than three toddlers and an infant . . but part of the simplifying of life.  And the full-circle sense is satisfying.  

This USA time is more than half over.  We've been present in all six churches that support us in some way.  I can't even count the number of meals and beds with gracious friends, the encouraging words from those that still care for us.  Another paradox, the peculiar juxtaposition of multiplying the interactions in America and yet aching for those we've left behind in Uganda.  Of deep and yet time-limited relationship.  Being back, but always moving on.  How to explain to people calling and emailing now that even though we don't leave until Christmas, we can't maintain this social pace all the way through to the very last day.  Scott is already in Philadelphia for meetings with WHM and will be mostly there until mid-November, then one more trip southwards to my sister's, Thanksgiving with both sets of parents, and then the final stretch.  Hate the awkwardness of being non-committal to people we'd love to see.