awakening.

This past month I’ve lived in a dream.  I’ve holed up in our little flat, in the shrunken world of our walled-up apartment complex, my body weak with sickness.  I’ve cringed back from noise and dirt and people and . . . from South Asia.  I’m a stranger in a strange land — my sickness every day reminding me of its strangeness — and the knowledge has been more than I can bear.

So for this whole month I hid away, both because I needed to and because I wanted to.  So many times I prayed I’d go to sleep and wake back up at home in America, where everything is clean and familiar and safe.  I wanted this bad dream to end.

But now, I’m beginning to awaken.  Slowly, slowly, my eyes are opening.  And with something akin to wonder, I find I am ready to live in my real life again.

I first felt it on our family walk this weekend, in the quiet breeze of a Sunday afternoon.  The world around us moved and breathed slowly.  Even the mangy dogs on the roadside looked lazy.  The rows of houses we ambled past stood quiet—their inhabitants indoors, stretched out in a late afternoon siesta, or just stirring to boil water for their tea.

It has been so long since I’ve walked with my family that I found myself jumping at every car or scooter that rumbled down the narrow street toward us, looking around for Judah and Amelie.  But they didn’t need me.  As soon as David called out “Car!” they found their way to the side of the road, waiting for it to pass before marching off again.

Who are these grown-up kids running circles around me in the dusty street?  They examine sticks and bugs and leap over potholes without a backward glance.  They show me which gated-up houses have guard dogs inside and which street to turn on to continue our way around the block.

And as for me, I startle myself by taking in the peace of the tree-lined street and feeling …. at home?  Surely not.  But I do think to myself, This is nice.

The quiet side-road takes us to a bustling main street where life picks up.  Shops and tea stalls are crammed together on the cracked sidewalk, and small crowds stand talking and sipping steamy chai and buying their spicy afternoon snacks.  Auto-rickshaws and motorcycles snake through it all, ignoring the divide between road and sidewalk, dodging and driving where they want.

“Look at this town!”  Judah announces, as we take the kids’ hands through the crowds of people and dogs and vehicles.  “I like it,” he pronounces his benediction; just as the quiet was good, the busy noise is also good, and life is as it should be here in our neighborhood.

I want to see this world through Judah and Amie’s eyes.  What is strange and larger-than-life to me is their normal—the pack of dogs jumping up to chase a rat in the empty lot ahead of us, the roadside temple with it’s garish bright paint and startling idols and smooth-swept grounds.  The pile of burnt-black garbage that they’d stop to rifle through if we didn’t move them on past it.

Something as simple as a walk in our neighborhood affords Judah and Amie all the excitement they want this evening.  We fought so hard for nine months to find activities for our children—clean parks and shopping malls and movie theatres.  And then, while I was laid aside in my bed, David stopped searching and looked around and saw what our kids see, that they are perfectly content with what we have and what we’ve overlooked all the time.

And so he began taking them on early-evening walks, teaching them to watch for traffic and steer clear of the dogs.  And, best of all, he slowed down to match their little-legged pace.  Walks aren’t for getting somewhere—they’re for being together and for looking at the world.

It turns out that we’re the only ones who are worried about our kids being bored.

And as I awaken, I’m ready to stop fighting for what we don’t have, and to walk along with them.

We find another side street leading us home and pass a group of neighbor kids playing in the road.  A boy notices us and flashes a bright smile, “Hi Aunty!”  And I recognize him from a photo David took and my heart melts as I smile back.