In December 2011, nineteen year old Ida decided to travel, with our dear friend and midwife Brenda, to rural Uganda and to Nairobi Kenya to serve for three months in birth clinics. It took no small effort for our family to come around to accepting our Ida going so far away, and you can also imagine that the technical aspect of planning the trip took a huge amount of effort from Brenda, Ida, and their families.
Personally, in the five weeks between the day Ida announced her hope of going until the day she left, I lived in a lost land of confusion, prayer, fear, and hope, climbing many mountains and descending into many dark valleys. It was the hardest learning about love and letting go that I have ever known, and it’s not over. I tried to separate out her destiny from my love and my need to ensure her safety, but ultimately I conclude that where love and family are, there is no separating out the life of one from another.
In the days preceding their departure we held three different kinds of rituals: one to which the whole town was invited, another with a small group of close friends and neighbors, and finally one with only our family. (For this last one our dog Nelly took Daniel’s place, as he was scrambling to get ready for the trip to the airport before the snowstorm!)
What follows are descriptions of those rituals, recorded with the idea that others might like to use some of the ideas in their own homes and communities. It is also an account of what love feels like at a time like this, in one particular community, neighborhood, and family, and between one particular mother and daughter. Each year of each century mothers see their children off on journeys and find ways to cope and to grow; here is the account of one way, in one time of the world.
I’m thinking now of the saying ‘How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.’ When I look over the many rituals we chose to bless this journey, I see that they are a reflection of how we have spent our days in the past. I am grateful that we have practiced the making of ritual in family and community and have collected ideas and tools over the years, for the practice of them has been just the power and balm we now.
If we ever wondered what we’d do to mark the sacred love of a family and community for travelers, now we know.
The Community Farewell
We wanted to send local money along to help with the many needs at the birth clinics, and so our family decided to hold two benefit concerts. We could have asked local musician friends to perform a variety show, but since our family happens to know a lot of songs and Sophie and Ida had been working on their repertoire all summer, we decided to offer a family concert with just a few guest singers.
In one week, in the middle of the recession, in a small rural community, together Brenda and our family raised $5,000. To witness such generosity took our breath away. But in addition to the money raised, we realized that the concert had served another important role for us, something that we wouldn’t have otherwise known to ask for. It provided a time and place for the wider community to say, each in their own way, a ‘Godspeed’ to the travelers.
Had it not been for this event, our family would, in these next 3 months, have encountered people everywhere we went kindly asking, “Say, haven’t seen Ida lately – is she off at school or what?” Ah, where to begin the response! And when in 3 months the travelers returned, all changed by what they had seen and done, no one but their closest friends and family would have known of their tender hearts that were still half on the other side of the world. But because of this community event, everyone knows. They know to hold these women and their families in their thoughts and prayers, and those thoughts and prayers feel like an essential part of the whole story. Now I wonder – how could we ever send people off to far away lands without a community blessing? When the Army Reservists go off on their missions, the townspeople line up on either side of Main Street to cheer them as they march away—how right that there would be a related ritual for any traveler who is leaving on some epic journey of service.
In our case, it took the form of this concert—a big party, really, that provided a setting in which people could offer their support. But this is just one form, and an accidental one at that. What other forms might such a ritual could have, and what it would take for a traveler and their loved ones to feel that this journey was worthy of a community send-off? Each can decide for themselves, but I hope that in the years to come such a blessing will become more common in all of our communities.
Our Neighborhood Ritual for the Travelers
The night before the departure, 5 families gathered at the home of a neighbor to share a meal and a ritual with Brenda and Ida. There were many more families whom I wished could have been there, but the idea was to have a small-ish group and so we kept it to 17 people.
Share a meal together is always wonderful and might have even seemed enough, but once you’ve experienced community ritual it becomes a necessary part of such an evening as this. The trick is to make a ritual that is of the right length and accessibility so that the participants will all feel comfortable and able to fit in, which can be a special challenge when there are people of all ages. Luckily for me, in this case all of the families gathered were accustomed to ritual and song, so once I had made a good plan that would not be tool long and also was sufficiently participatory for all, I could proceed with confidence.
Setting: At the beginning we stood holding hands in the living room in a circle of silence. After the first song we sat on the floor.
Stating our Purpose: Normally I think ahead a little about what to say at this important part of a ritual, but everything about this journey has left my heart so open and bare that I knew whatever came out of my mouth would be true. It went something like this, though was surely less organized:
“We sit in this circle, family and friends of Brenda and Ida, to offer our prayers and blessings for their journey, that you will be safe, healthy, balanced, and peaceful. We gather all our love here tonight to send across the ocean with you, We are grateful to you for your courage and your service, grateful for all that you will share of our community with our brothers and sisters in East Africa and grateful for all of their beauty and wisdom that you will bring home to share with us.”
Group Song: “Good Where We’ve Been.” This is a song so simple that I could just sing it through once, gesture to the others to join, and they did.
Good where we’ve been, good where we’re going to,
Good where we’ve been, good where we’re going to
Na na na na na na na ...
Na na na na na na na …
Poem: Before beginning the ritual I had asked Randi if she would read this poem, Blessing for a Traveler by Ursula K. Le Guin
Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.
Let there be deep snow on your inbreathing
and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well loved one,
walk mindfully, well loved one,
walk fearlessly, well loved one.
Return to us, return to us,
be always coming home.
Group Song: While You Are Away, author unknown. I had just learned this song a few months ago, from Sophie and Ida who learned it when they were traveling in Northern Wisconsin to a skill share. They had come home excited to share it with me…who would have known how soon it would become the perfect song for our occasion. We sing it with an echo, so that there is no teaching needed and everyone can sing the song already on the first time through. The leader sings one line, then everyone repeats, each holding the last note of their line to interweave the parts.
While you are away
From your people, we do pray
On your journey you will find
Balance in your heart and mind.
Yarn Circle: Now we came to the physical part of our ritual, the meatiest time, the time when each person is given an opportunity to contribute to the whole.
I had brought many differently colored skeins of yarn, and before the ritual began I had asked Ida and Brenda to each choose two colors. Now, with those 4 skeins at my side, I introduced the plan to the circle. I held in one hand one end of each of the colors. This color represents Brenda, and this one Ida, and this one represents us, their beloved community that holds them in our hearts, and this last one represents the people and other beings in the place where they are going. I explained that I would pass the bundle of yarn ends to my right, and that person holding them could speak of anything they choose or they could just hold them silently before passing them on. They might offer blessings, thoughts, wishes, stories, song – anything.
Thus the yarn was passed all around the circle, and each person took their turn with reverence for their own part in this group blessing. Children took their turn, and Ida and Brenda each spoke as well. I suppose this part lasted about 20 minutes, with lots of perfect silences throughout as the yarn was passed and received, and as people gathered their thoughts before speaking. It seemed that, in this group, people had been part of such rituals often enough that they all knew that whatever they said or did would be a perfect part of the whole, and that there was no need to worry about saying something important or perfect enough. We knew that all together it would be perfect.
When the yarn ends had traveled the circumference of our people and come back to me, we had created a circle of yarn that exactly fit us, representing the four entities that travel together (Ida, Brenda, our community, and the beings on their path in Africa). Now those entities had been held together in the hands and hearts of all of us together in this night. As we sat there each holding our piece of the circle, we sang a few more songs:
Song: All Before Me Peaceful, from the Navajo
All before me peaceful,
All behind me peaceful,
Over me peaceful,
Under me peaceful
All around me peaceful, all around me peaceful.
Then I took some scissors, held them up and explained that we would pass them around so each could cut their section and keep it. They could braid or weave it, or leave it as it is…they could wrap it around their ankle or wrist or waist, or leave it somewhere in their home or woods. The important thing is, we would hold the circle for Brenda and Ida and each other in this way, each taking home with us a part to care for in our own way. (Ida, who twisted her section into a rope and tied it around her ankle, told me later that night how much she appreciated having this physical remembrance to bring with her on the trip).
This part was going to take a few minutes to accomplish and I wanted during that time to both lift the feeling of quietness and also help the energy to not disperse into lots of simultaneous conversations, so I added a little sprinkle of Iowa, “to help them remember where they came from and to where they will return” (I was not one bit ashamed of saying outloud that I wanted them to return!) I read local poet Mary Jo Homstad’s poem “Iowa Countryside, the Perfect Food,” with which all are familiar because we all helped to paint it on a big mural in downtown Decorah:
I eat the green rolling hills
Red barns and Blue Sky,
The bright sun slanting deliciously.
I eat it in huge great gulps,
Moving along harvesting all I see.
I eat it after a bone hard day
I eat knowing it is the perfect food with its dancing light, green secrets
And dark vitality.
For dessert, I swallow clouds
Lining and all.
Next, as part of the spontaneous Iowa section of our ritual, I started the song that we all know, Greg Brown’s “Iowa Waltz”
Home in the midst of the corn, middle of the USA
Here’s where I was born, and here’s where I’m going to stay
Iowa, Iowa, winter spring summer or fall
Come and see, come dance with me to the beautiful Iowa waltz.
We take care of our young, take care of our old, make hay while the sun shines.
Growing our crops and singing our songs from planting until harvest time.
Iowa, Iowa, winter spring summer or fall
Come and see, come dance with me to the beautiful Iowa waltz.
Blessing: Since I didn’t have something for everyone to read, I chose for the readings a special subgroup with whom I was especially identifying: the mothers. There were two other mothers present besides Brenda and me, and now I asked Kristin to read this blessing by Donald Jeffrey Hayes:
Not with my hands
But with my hear I bless you:
May peace forever dwell
Within your breast!
May truth’s white light
Move with you and possess you-
And may you thoughts and words
Wear her bright crests!
May time move down
Its endless path of beauty
Conscious of you
And better for your being
Spring after spring
Array itself in splendor
Seeking the favor
Of your sentient seeing!
May hills lean toward you,
Hills and windswept mountains,
And trees be happy
Hat have seen you pass—
Your eyes dark kinsmen
To the start above you—
Your feet remembered
By the lades of grass…..!
Closing: This group happens to know some really beautiful song-dances that are perfect for just such a moment. Usually we share just one of them at any given time, but in this case, with our beloveds going so very far away for so long, we pulled out all stops and sang all three of them.
Irish Blessing Song (trad): We stood in our places in the circle, where we sang and used the hand motions that go along with this song. In the end, during the lyrics “May life hold you in the beauty of her hand,” the motions create a conjoined cirle of hands gently holding each other. Some in our group knew it already, and some learned it as we went. We sang it twice, to give everyone a chance to get more familiar with it. (If this had been the only song we were singing at our closing, I would have led us to do it 3 or 4 times.)
May the road rise with you,
May the wind be always at your back
May the sun shine down upon your face
May the rains fall softly on your fields
And until we meet again, may life hold you
With a gentle loving hand.
Next, we sang a blessing song brought here recently by our friend Aimee Ringle. She learned it at the Singing Alive! gathering our West, but she and a friend composed the new tune. For this song, the participants all stand in two lines facing each other, about 3 feet apart. Then one person stands at the head of that column and ever-so-slowly walks through silently and with her eyes closed, as all the others sing and gently touch her and guide her down the column. They touch her head, neck, face, arms, back, shoulders –anything that would feel loving and supportive. Usually during this song everyone takes a turn at walking down the column, and the participants are informed that if they would like to walk through but not be touched, they can indicate that by crossing their arms over their chest. For this ritual, only Ida and Brenda walked through, and we had them walk through together, side by side holding hands.
I can’t tell you how beautiful this song is, and what a blessing it is for both those walking and for those doing the singing and supporting. It is just what a person would always want to feel in life –such a simple and tangible way to give and receive the love we all deserve.
I behold you beautiful one
I behold you, child of the earth and sun
Let my love wash over you
Let my love watch over you.
And finally, we moved into three co-centric circles, placing Ida and Brenda holding each other in the center, for our oldest and most familiar song of farewell blessing. We sing this song whenever we’ve been gathered for a long time (at least overnight) for a special time. Each of the circles walks slowly to the right or the left while the people in the center close their eyes and listen as the sounds move about them. We sing the song a bunch of times so that the people in the center can sink into the amazing vibrations of movement and song and love.
This song is from another traditional Irish Blessing, and the tune is from the Incredible String Band.
May the long time sun shine upon you
All love surround you
And the pure light within you
Guide you on your way home.
This song lends itself to a long quiet heartfelt group-holding at the end, as all the singers close in gently toward those in the center. And so it was that we ended our ritual with such a holding.
Thank you to all who made this group blessing for Ida and Brenda, and to all those others whom I know would gladly have lent their night to such an event.
Afterwards, we sat at the kitchen table and co-created an art project/game to send along to East Africa: a homemade Memory game. Each person was given two sets of blank squares of framing mat board, 1 ½ ” square. With markers each drew two sets of identical pictures. Without instructions to suggest the idea, the group naturally created a set of cards that showed where we live and what we love: snowpeople, hills, flowers, people holding hands, skies, mittens, and more.
Our Family Ritual, on the day of Ida’s departure
In spite of the hustle needed to get us off toward Minneapolis, we were committed on the day of departure to taking the time to have a small family ritual as well. True, we already had two really beautiful going-away moments in the last few days, first with our wider community and then with our neighbors, but our small family is accustomed to marking the passing of the years and the special times with ritual and this was by far the biggest thing that had ever happened to us. Not until later did I come to realize the beauty of the week’s rituals, starting with the huge group at the concert (and all the others whose support was felt even though they couldn’t attend) and then focusing smaller and closer a little more with each passing day, until we were left alone as a family to launch Ida toward Brenda and Africa.
Had it been at night and had we not needed to keep moving toward Minneapolis, we could have easily taken a few hours to bask in all of this. As it was, the ritual lasted about 30 minutes, and then Sophie and Ida lingered together for the after-stuff (see below) while I tended to other things.
The first snowstorm of the year was predicted to come while we were in Minneapolis, so Daniel was intensely focused on getting the outside ready to be covered with snow for the winter—picking up items left in the yard, covering the carrots in the garden with straw for midwinter harvest, getting the blade on the tractor, etc. Ten years ago I would have been obsessed with the need for all of us to be physically present at such a ritual, but I’ve grown up a little bit and it wasn’t hard to accept the reality that he would not join us. We thanked him for taking care of these things and giving us the time to make this ritual, and our beloved dog Nelly took his place. I also had to let go of my own wish that I had had more time to look for just the perfect poems, blessings, and songs—I like to spend long luxurious time preparing with my books and quiet time, but there wasn’t time. It was a good day to practice letting whatever came be just perfect, and of course it was.
So the four of us-Ida, Sophie, Nelly, and me-went up to Sophie’s nice clean bedroom where the afternoon sun shone in, and I set up a centerpiece: for a tablecloth, a Kenyan textile that Brenda had given us, and on top of that a ceramic tray made by Ida. In the center of the tray was the small bowl that we always use in ritual, a gift from Sophie and Ida’s great-grandmother. Grandma Carmion would have loved to have been part of our rituals but because of circumstances of timing and place, the closest she could get to this kind of stuff was to quit church and have a secret interest in the Unitarians. (I wish I could tell her now that being a member of a church doesn’t take away the possibility of having these kinds of homemade rituals, and that the Unitarians would have welcomed her whether she was a Christian or was exploring any other kind of personal spirituality).
The bowl held some olive oil with a few drops of rosemary, the herb of remembrance. We would use that for an anointing of Ida. Around the bowl were a variety of tumbled and polished stones from around the world, a recent gift from our B& B guests. Beside the tray sat a ceramic plate, also made by Ida – this one, which we always use for rituals, has a spiral in the center. On the plate, a small candle, and around the base of the candle holder, pale orange yarn from the same ball that Ida chose to represent her in last night’s neighborhood ritual. On another plate, some simple things to eat: a few black walnuts from our yard, gathered and dried by Ida earlier this fall, cracked open so we could pick out the meats during our ritual, and one mandarin orange, special treat of the season. Homemade apple juice waited in a blue goblet.
We began, as almost always, holding hands in a circle of silence (Nelly held hands with her eyes.) It’s a perfect way to come to a quiet place and strengthen the bond between each other as we set out to build our energy together in the ritual.
Opening and Stating Our Purpose: As Ida lit the candle, I called the directions. This is a spoken invocation of the invisible powers that are all around us, inviting them and acknowledging them in our gathering. It’s the same calling out of the name of God that people of all religions do in their rituals, asking that God be with us here and now. In this setting, we call out the North, spirit of earth; East, spirit of air; South, spirit of fire; West, spirit of water; the Above, the Below, and the Center. It’s a nice way to begin.
I named our purpose: to circle with Ida and wrap around her our love, protection, and hopes for many beautiful connections with our brothers and sisters in Africa.
Song: When I Breathe In (author unknown)
When I breathe in, I breathe in peace
When I breathe out, I breathe out love
Reading: by Rainer Maria Rilke. This excerpt is from the only book I took with me when I went alone to Bolivia when I was exactly Ida’s age. Sophie read it aloud:
“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves. Don’t reach for the answers, which could not be given to you now because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to lie everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday day in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
Song: Sophie and I sang “Every Long Journey”, by Ann Reed. We don’t know it by heart but we had the lyrics written down:
Every long journey is made of small steps
Is made of the courage, the feeling you get
We know it’s been waiting, been waiting in you
The journey’s the only thing you want to do
Chorus
We cannot know what you go through or see through your eyes
But we will surround you with pride undisguised
In any direction, whatever you do
You’re taking our love there with you
In every long journey, what drives you to go
Is half what you know, and half what you don’t
The secret’s been waiting, your heart’s got the key
The secret’s the only thing you want to see
Every long journey begins with a dream
A spirit, with courage to make it all real
The dream has been calling, been calling to you
The cream is the only think you want to do
Anointing: Here we are in the physical part, the meat of the ritual. Ida closed her eyes and Sophie took the small bowl of oil and dipped her fingers in it to massage Ida’s hands, wrists, and arms, as I read this blessing by Diann Neu. It’s from one of my favorite books of blessings, poems, and prayers, “Earth Prayers” ed. Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon. It’s slightly revised here from Diann’s original, omitting the parts for older people. Ida
Blessed be the works of your hands, O Holy One.
Blessed be these hands that have touched life.
Blessed be these hands that have nurtured creativitity.
Blessed be these hands that have held pain.
Blessed be these hands that have embraced with passion.
Blessed be these hands that have tended gardens.
Blessed be these hands that have closed in anger.
Blessed be these hands that have planted new seeds.
Blessed be these hands that have harvested ripe fields.
Blessed be these hands that have cleaned, washed, mopped, and scrubbed.
Blessed be these hands that have reached out and been received.
Blessed be these hands that hold the promise of the future.
Blessed be the works of your hands, O Holy One.
After the reading was finished, Ida kept her eyes closed and said that it would be nice to be anointed in other places too, so I took the oil and touched my fingers to her forehead, temples, chest, tummy, and more. Afterwards I bumped into this other blessing which we could have used for the anointing instead, by Robin Morgan from the book Life Prayers, also edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon:
Blessed be my brain
that I may conceive of my own power
Blessed be my breast
that I may give sustenance to those I love
Blessed be my womb
that I may create what I choose to create
Blessed be my knees
that I may bend so as not to break.
Blessed be my feet
that I may walk in the path of my highest will.
The Stones: After the anointing I invited each of us to take a turn holding the tray of stones and choosing one to take with us as part of our ongoing ritual for love and protection of Ida (and Brenda, though she wasn’t present). Sophie and I are often found these days holding ours, and I know that Ida’s is present with her as well.
Songs and sharing of food: We sang a few more short and simple songs that we know together. I also sang my new version of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” – When Ida comes waltzing home again, hurrah, hurrah! We’ll give her a hearty welcome then, hurrah, hurrah! The women will cheer and the men will shout, the children they will all come out! And we’ll all feel gay when Ida comes waltzing home!” (repeat, with Brenda’s name). We ate the walnuts, oranges and applejuice, each offering an orange section to the other and each holding the goblet for the other—a nice symbol for service to each other and to the world, and a nice way to connect with our history in the Christian church of the sharing of the wine.
Song: I Carry You Always in My Heart (author unknown)
While singing this song at about the pace of a heartbeat, the singers tap a heartbeat on their hearts with their right hands.
I carry you always in my heart
I carry you always in my heart
All life is a journey, and we are here together
Like stones dropped in the water, we ripple on forever
I carry you always in my heart
I carry you always in my heart
Closing: With that we closed our simple ceremony, again invoking the names of the directions and this time thanking them for their presence in our gathering. Just like in church.
Then we moved on to the informal part of our time together. I had a big white votive candle, some colored beeswax for decorating, and scissors. We sat together and decorated that candle, each of us contributing our own vision to the group art project. The beautiful candle now sits on the kitchen windowsill – I haven’t decided whether to burn it before Ida and Brenda return or to save it. While we decorated, I asked Sophie and Ida to help me make a list of all the projects they had done around our land last summer and fall. I guess the connection between this list and our ritual is that part of the whole story is about change, about the end of this particular era of our family. We dearly hope that both young women will come back again and again and ultimately live here permanently, but right now there is outward movement.
The list included things like: built a willow hut in the woods, made new fire circle, learned to make cheese, rebuilt chicken yard and got a new flock, made twine from nettle fiber, harvested wild parsnips, worked in herb garden, gathered hickory nuts, made wild grape juice and jam, learned to can many foods, made lots of music, kayaked, built a sawdust toilet for our family, organized a skill share, drew pictures of each other…
I left the girls – can I still call them that? – alone in the evening light of the bedroom where they had slept so many nights and where Daniel and I sleep now. The window faces the cabin where they were both born, built in 1853 by their great-great-great-great grandparents. I know for certain that all of their ancestors are glad for their being here and for the choices they are making. I believe that their ancestors – not only the Norwegian ones, but also the Polish and the German and the ones long before that, tracing all the way back to the Rift Valley in Uganda and Kenya, the cradle of humanity—that all of their ancestors are rooting for them and for all of us, every minute.
The Rituals Never End…
We slept at my folks’ that night in Roseville, near the airport. The plane would leave the next day. Ida slept between Daniel and me, where she has slept so many nights even up until now. Our family has always played musical beds, switching out one family member for another over the months and years, and so it was nothing new to be sleeping together, but of course this night was special and we tried to get three months of snuggles absorbed into one short night. It was short because both Ida and I were up very late in bed making things—she, a birthday card and present to leave behind for Sophie, and me, a card to tuck into Ida’s suitcase along with all the other things that Sophie, my mom, and I had sneaked in there. I loved sitting there in the quiet night hours with Ida, each manifesting our family love in our own way. I loved Daniel there sleeping by our side.
I have a favorite and very old cotton scarf, by far the article of clothing most dear to me and the girls. It’s kind of like the velveteen rabbit – it has become real over these last 30 years from being present during so much of our lives. It’s been lost a few times and has come back. It has adorned my head and neck as well as those of Sophie, Ida, and even Daniel. It has covered tables during rituals. It always goes camping with us. Now I wanted to send it along with Ida, to give her comfort and strength through the smells and feels of home. I knew that I would do this and of course it wasn’t at all hard for me to part with it for such a purpose, but I had another idea too: to cut it in half, send half with her and keep the other half always near me. Yes I believe in many kinds of magic and the power of this symbol seemed good to me. Yet, every time I sat down and smoothed out the cloth and held up the scissors to begin the cut, I couldn’t do it. For one thing, I wasn’t sure that Ida would like to see the scarf cut, and also I wanted to be sure that there would be a way for her to know that I would have gladly sent the whole thing along with her too, but loved the powerful symbolism of the one becoming two.
It wasn’t until we were at the airport that I was finally able to do it. Even after I went to a private corner, twice I smoothed out the scarf on the airport floor and then gathered it up again, took a few paces, and laid it out again. Strangers seated in nearby chairs watched me warily with my long scissors poised in the air, surely looking half-crazy with all of my emotions. But finally I took the first cut. The scissors were fine and sharp, and the cut was clean. As I worked, I knew that this was indeed the perfect symbol for us now—I, her mother, bravely tearing myself away from what would seem to be most natural and right: an intact scarf, and a daughter who I can continue to love, in person, every day. But sometimes, for reasons I still cannot justify or explain, things don’t proceed in that natural-seeming and easy way. Sometimes the cloth is separated. We can only hope that the fibers, grown so close over years of living together, are in the end cosmically inseparable. We can only believe that they will stay close even though far apart, and that soon they will be joined again in this world. My sewing machine is ready, and my heart is so ready it can hardly bear the waiting.
Because of all the security, we had to say goodbye to them two hours before their departure. I took Ida aside and babbled something unnecessary to her (probably repeats of things I’d already said or said in my letter to her, and later I wished I would have kept silent). I handed her a little cloth-wrapped gift to open later. It was a small doll, about 3” high that she had made for me to take on a recent trip to Canada, made of old cloth from her favorite clothes from childhood. I had loved this doll and she had comforted me many times in my loneliness for home. I had set out to make a sister doll to send with Ida, but she is far more talented than I at such things and I gave up. Instead, I gave this girl a new apron for her new journey, and made her a headscarf, and crafted some satchels to string around her shoulders. The satchels held herbs from her garden and Jacob Sheep wool from our friends.
Then I unwrapped the scarf from my neck and placed it around hers. She started in surprise as she saw that there was still the same scarf on my neck, and asked how I had found another just like it. No, I said—this was the same one, we would sew it back together when she returned. No, I thought—there is no other scarf like this one, just as there is no other love like ours. All of these things come only once, and then we spend our lives stewarding and protecting that love in all the ways we know how. I am learning and inventing all the ways I possibly can, and here is one more.
Amazing, in the coming days, how often I noticed that the weight of that scarf on my neck was exactly half. I missed the weight of the other half, again and again. Perfect.
Ida and Brenda have been gone a week now. For the first three days there was no contact and the only things that kept me from falling to my knees with fears and longings for contact were these things I have to touch. There is the stone, which travels in my pockets and sits on the kitchen counter. There are the 4 pieces of yarn, which are tied around my waist. Half of it I twisted into rope before dawn’s light one morning during her first travels to Uganda, and the other half awaits the time of the next travel, to Nairobi. There is the red blown-glass oil lamp, a gift to Daniel and me from Sophie and Ida a few years ago, which sits in a beautiful arrangement inside a bowl made by Ida in the style of one of her great-grandma Carmion’s favorite candleholders, which in turn is set in a bowl from Kenya given to us by Brenda and her husband Mwaura after their last trip to Kenya. Around the base I have placed more of the stones from our last ritual, and the rest of the skein of pale orange Ida-yarn as well as the rest of the Brenda-yarn. I keep this lamp lit for part of every day. Then there are the little groups of words I have arranged to speak outloud often, such as “Protection, Health, Balance, Peace.” And another, composed by dear Daniel: “I love Ida. Ida is on the other side of the world. Ida is with good people. All is well.” And I go outside often during the day to sing a song at the top of my lungs, projecting it either East or West and trusting that the vibrations are headed toward Uganda.
And, I have one half of a cotton scarf, consciously wrapped around my neck in the daytime and then carefully coiled into a spiral next to my bed at night. All of these things. All of these things are what I have now, but I am trying also to learn to time-travel so that I can feel her breath on my cheek, feel the vibration of her song in my chest, feel a way to physically manifest my own power on her behalf. Not until now did I think it possible or necessary to discover new ways of living in that light, different ways of touching and serving. But there it is again: what else but such intensity of love could call us beyond what we ever knew we could do, or even wanted to do? What else but the love of a parent for her child could make me want to be, as never before, one with God?
