Ahead of us, my two older kids had set the pace with their stop-and-go hiking style of running, skipping, wrestling, snowball fighting. We were trying out a new trail—both new to us and new to the world. The Sandstone Ranch Open Space had recently opened in this tucked away part of Colorado.
“Their shadows are so long,” Brad said. “It’s weird that the sun is so low already.”
I checked the time: just after 1 p.m. on the kids’ last day of winter break. School would start the next day—in our living room, and kitchen and basement in this “new normal” style of online sometimes, in-person sometimes, uncertainty twisting through it all. It was still just the middle of the day, but the sun hung only a few degrees over the western mountains.
Maybe you noticed from my Facebook feed and my blog posts: Hiking kept our family moving through 2020. Spring, summer, fall, winter, we got out and journeyed past red rocks and through arching forests. One thing we do to keep us trudging through “re-entry” is being honest with where we’re at after our life-changing move from Indonesia to Colorado in 2019. As we hike, we talk about how fast the seasons change here. How long winter shadows are no matter the time of day. And how out-of-sync we sometimes feel with it all.
At first, I embraced the out-of-synchronicity. I kept my Indonesian driver’s license in the main slot in my wallet, my new Colorado one tucked behind it. I left Indonesian coins in my purse, admittedly, a bit of a pain when searching for quarters to put in parking meters, but a tangible reminder of colorful open-air markets there. And I waited six months to change the time zone settings on my computer from GMT+7 to Mountain Time Zone. When I finally let that one go, I realized I didn’t need it. I still have that internal clock in me. I What’s App my Indonesian friends and don’t have to check some time zone reference to know they’re still sleeping, or just waking, or sweating through an 88-degree afternoon.
The Army kid in me, who put together a whole childhood out of the pieces of transitions, guilts me into pushing past my grief. Don’t look back, keep moving on, I chastise myself when it’s Christmas and I’m finally with family in the States, but I’m missing our friends and traditions and jelly drinks in Indonesia.
That life is over now. Open your heart and your story to new friends. Put away the flipflops and buy socks. Get your kids some gloves, for goodness’ sake. Vote…for somebody! You live here now. Accept it.
Some days it’s fun and new and the connections made here in my first language of English are deep and the adventures among the mountains are fresh. Other days, this country of mine feels too divided and the tensions are wearying and I don’t belong and I don’t wanna belong. And it feels like I’m carving my way forward through stone, creating a tunnel barely wide enough to swing my arms.
An Indonesian friend of my kids who spent almost everyday in our Indonesian home texted me just as Indonesia was entering 2021. It was still the middle of the day my time, still in 2020, the sun still shining here—but, ya know, too low in the winter sky. She asked to talk to us. I readily agreed, and I gathered my two younger kids around me to stare into What’s App. We showed her our snow. And we got to see her house and her mom and her new kittens and a sneak peak at the new year. Thank you, technology, for bringing her life into ours in real time. My younger two kids, though, have lost most of their Indonesian language, and so I had to translate, back and forth, across the ever-widening gulf and it hurt. So much.
Strangely, despite its isolating ways, COVID has created a new community and connection to us here. People right now are hurting and lonely and raw and open to empathy and people who take the time to reach out, check in, ask how they’re doing, believe their fears, listen without judgement. We’re going through what is essentially a worldwide trauma and trauma experienced on a community-level has a way of forming bonds. I haven’t lived here in 14 years, but we’re walking through the same life-defining story that we’ll never forget. I’m here in the days when the States holds the highest COVID cases and when we’re all juggling distance learning and worrying about parents and grandparents. And if we’re lucky, we’re working from home and holding our breaths for layoffs and checking for fevers and wondering what the election results will mean. Maybe it doesn’t matter if I’m a bit out-of-sync because I’m in-it-together with my neighbors here now, too.
But I also still care when a friend in Indonesia texts about COVID cases over there, about injuries from a motorbike accident, about the Sriwijaya airplane that crashed on its way to the island that once was Home. I care but feel powerless, distant, unsure how to talk about my concerns over there to my new people here.
It’s a gulf and I feel stretched between worlds, a little lost somewhere in the middle.
But then I get a text from a friend who understands. “I hope you feel caught between worlds for the rest of your life…not in a bad way…but not forgetting what life is like for so many others around the world.”
Maybe my life now is a narrow path through stone, but chiseled with care and intention and courage and resilience. The layers of my Indonesia life back then lift in beautiful layers of rock around me now, guiding me with all I learned, never leaving my side or my story.
Maybe, too, my life is a shadow, shifting in changing seasons and changing continents. It makes a mark on the world that is partly shaped like me, but with the texture of the world at my feet.
And I hope my life is a bridge connecting worlds, spanning divides, built from compassion for both here and there, with views of beauty around the globe. May it keep reaching out and connecting perspectives, voices, stories and friends everywhere.