Glory Ho

Do you ever wonder if someday you’ll get to that point, you know. . .that one point, in life, when you’re so happy with that Cambodian silk patchwork bedspread you purchased on impulse, so pleased about how far you’ve come in your Portugese classes and how great last season’s tomatoes turned out, so confident in your job as a recruiter or  television producer or product manger or art teacher and so comfortable with that path you’ve chosen–regardless of whether it took you past wildflowers or a few mountain lion dens—that you’ll see someone else’s life as a.  . .filmmaker or Mom or real estate agent or bio-engineer . .with her Victorian home and pin-ball machine collection and three kids and perfect Christmas cards and all the right things in her purse at any given moment and NOT think: “Well, I wish I was like THAT.”

I think I might be getting there.

And I’m telling you, it’s a fucking beautiful place.

Bizarre, but beautiful.

This place where I’ve realized that I CANNOT be all things, all people, all beings.

I can just be me.

In Rwanda, they always open your soda bottles at the table. This proves they are not poisoning you.

In Rwanda, long muddy streams the color of my coffee were lined with Primus beer bottles. I didn’t like it.

In Rwanda, we had a beer at the Hotel des Milles Collines. Remember? There was a pool.

In Rwanda, we were not big news. No.

In Rwanda, you cannot eat on the street. Inside only.

In Rwanda, we rode on motorbikes. With helmets.

In Rwanda, Antonia–a chin like a fist and a the bun of the woman in the ABC afterschool special who lives in the house on the hill. We saw giraffes together.

In Rwanda, there was a mouse in our room. I stood on a chair.

In Rwanda, the tea fields were the green we must see in the womb. The cups of tea were terrible.

In Rwanda, an older–perhaps more violent, perhaps more scared–version of everyone. You just can’t tell.

In Rwanda, the grey-crested crane is the national bird. I didn’t care for him.

In Rwanda, we watched Miami Vice and Friends in French. It was the one where Ross almost drinks the fat.

In Rwanda, we went to the border of the Congo. We peered across into Goma, where there is now a lot of trouble.

In Rwanda, the sun was a drop of Tang. That was the morning of the crows.

In Rwanda, we bought a ticket from Ethiopian Airlines. We went home.

The other day I heard an interview with Dar Williams on NPR. Her voice sounded like that of the beatnik lover, Rosemarie Whitman, in MadMen.  She talked like today was the best day of her life, the first day.

But she said something I loved:

Perspective is our reward for the the anguish we go through earlier in life.

So true.