Increments of Time
Increments of Time
We all find many ways to measure the passage of time. Sometimes it is as simple as the time between opening the bins of sweaters to put in the drawers at the first sign of frost to getting the swimsuits out 6 months later. Sometimes it is equal to the time between phone calls, letters, or e-mails from a special friend we miss and long to connect with. And for those of us with children, it can often be measured in a new area of maturity in our kids. Wow, he doesn't argue with me anymore about it being time to get ready! Wow, she just knows to put her plate in the sink without me saying it!
Here on Kwaj, I'm finding time to be a hard one to grasp. Weather never fluctuates more than a few degrees, no leaves change, and no weather fronts really move in. I can look out my window in August and get the same exact view I get when I look out my window in December. It is hard to grasp holidays being upon us, if it weren't for the fake Christmas tree in my house, or the attempt at Christmas lights at night in town. Does Christmas still come when you can go to the beach and enjoy warm, placid lagoon waters 5 minutes after just sitting on Santa's lap? While Advent traditions count down the Christmas season in our home, on Kwaj, a weekly visit from Santa reminds us where we are on the calendar. First, he shows up coming off of an airplane on the runway and enjoying a float ride through “town” (really a euphemism for the only commercial block of street anywhere on the island). Then, he comes to our “Macy's” to have little ones pose for pictures on his lap and ask him for gifts. During the third week, he comes out of the lagoon in a scuba suit and onto the beach (you have to time this right and not have your little ones watch him actually descend into the lagoon ahead of time). And finally, he comes by sleigh and reindeer to Kwaj on Christmas Eve. My oldest son believes Santa just uses all of these visits as excuses to come to one of the most beautiful climates in the world. Me too.
As I've shared before, time here is also the amount of hours we exist and suck in air between mail planes and monthly barges. It is the well-child visit that I only have to wait 5 minutes to see the dr. for (try a full-hour wait back in Boston!). It is the fact that in a 15-minute bike ride, I can be at the complete other end of the island from where we live. It is the length of time grass takes to grow before we have to cut it (3 or 4 weeks?) and the once-every-5-or-6 weeks when the Marshallese men trim the palm fronds before they get to be too heavy on the trees. Let me tell you, these are the true, HUGE palm branches....not the small token ones handed out at church on Palm Sunday. You could mop your floor with these! You could dust your roof with them!
The other way in which time passes for me here is in minute increments of our own adjustment. I have lived in many different places over the years, and being new to a community is essentially always the same. When you accidentally slip and call Kwaj “home” or think about how that first trip off-island in January means you leave your personal belongings behind at your new household here and don't take them all with you, it is hard to deny that this is indeed “home,” if only for a while. In many ways, it is a good feeling to have a sense of being “known” (hopefully in a positive light) in a new place. That kind of thing seems to happen much much faster on an island so small. People know your husband's arrival time home from work, how often you post mail to the U.S., and if your son got every question right on a recent spelling test, without you even telling them! I think more than the American families living here, the Marshallese nannies all know my children by name now. As in much of Concord, MA (where we most recently lived before here), the nannies are the adults at home with kids during the day. They are often inviting us to get together to have the kids play and kill the hours of being at home without other adult company. I also realize that so many things are just so natural now that had me so stressed at first: Sunscreen has become my new body lotion, and biking a few miles a day (sometimes with 60 pounds of kids in the trailer attached to me) has become my new physical fitness program. Getting the ice cream home before it melts has become a work of art, as have online shopping for basic needs (who sends here, who doesn't?) and figuring out when the best time to maximize the effects of taking a shower here are (pretty much in the evening after your last bike ride, or multiple times a day if you have time). Time is also the passage between off-island trips, a chance to get back to the States, the months' countdown after just getting here, and the months' countdown for those ready to PCS (move) back home.
Finally, time is a matter of our own personal growth. I “got back in the ring” again recently after withdrawing a bit to regroup and figure out how will I ever exist and not feel smothered here. Time is the 7 days between church services when I get to reflect on how well or poorly I have coped and contributed to the community in a week's time. I am claiming a piece of this island now. I am no longer trying to fight the fact it isn't truly normal and natural to me to live here. I am inviting it into my heart, with full permission to reside there. I am reminding myself that Kwaj claiming a part of my heart does not mean I am pushing Boston out, or San Jose, or Vandenberg AFB, or Pittsburgh, or Japan, or Philly, or any of the wonderful people we have met in all of those places. There is room for the Rock. I need to experience time the Kwaj way for a little while. Stay tuned.
Monday, December 10, 2007