Cameroon letter #12 - Mother's Day

Dear Mom,

Out across the harbor a buoy is blinking red – sudden flashes in the low-hanging indigo night. I know right now the evening is draped humid and warm over the cooling ship railings of Deck 8. I am perched on one of the high aluminum counters in the crew galley (kitchen), dangling my heels and listening to Johann Johannsson and waiting for the apple crisp cheesecake that Mica and Lou and I put together to finish baking.

Susy, Gemma, Denise, and Mica - on our way out of port for a walk across Douala

                It’s hard to believe I’ve already been on the AFM for 8 weeks. Or that my plane flight to Paris leaves tomorrow. I’m excited for my time in Europe, excited for some time alone, excited to explore a part of the world I’ve never seen. But I’m also sad to leave the AFM and the friends I have made here and Africa. A small voice in the back of my mind adds, “and to leave me,” because I really feel like I am more wholly myself when I am in Africa, more in touch with all the parts of me, more complete, less schismatic in heart and mind. We are the sum of our actions on our surroundings and their action on us. And I love this sum that is me right now.  People say, “are you excited to go to med school? To travel Europe? To see your family?” and the answer is yes, yes of course. But it’s a yes colored with gray creeping dread, because going to med school and seeing my family means leaving part of me behind again. And I miss that part of me, anticipatorily.

donating blood for one of my patients

To say any one part of yourself is the best part is simplistic, I think – we are pieces all put together – but the part I feel I am about to leave is one of the brightest in the stained-glass window through which whatever light my life is shines. I’m a little afraid to see the dust accumulate on it again, to forget it in the lack of daily cues or daily use, to mute it in other parts of the world so its intensity doesn’t overpower everything else that I am, to let my curating mind obsequiously drape it over in sheets for some pointless deep-cerebral storage once more. I’m more than a little afraid. But I’m also trying not to mull over it much.  

sunset stir-fry dinner with my friend Lou (taking the picture) on the top deck of the ship 

Grief is a broken glass bottle with horribly sharp edges. At first they are unknown and brand new and you can’t miss them. But then with a little time and very gentle hands you learn to avoid or just not encounter the edges. And I think that’s what I’m going to try to do – as I backpack in Europe and come back to the US and move for med school, I’ll find the sharp edges and then I’ll just move my fingers past them very softly when I have to and try not to think much about them until my mind pulls its big white sheets over them and leaves them, hulking draped elephants in the rooms of house I am, for an unknown day when maybe the light streams through those rooms again.

the hotel room Chelsea and Xin and I shared when we went to the crater lakes

I’m missing a lot of things right now – not acutely. Most of them aren’t stark, clear outlines in a bright morning. Most are vague shapes in the half dusk before a new dawn, edges of something half-discovered waiting to be fully seen, or in the deep twilight when the emerging moon and stars demand attention and blur all competition. Baby Jean is a deep twilight kind of absence for me. I know he’s gone but I’m fine until someone says, “I wonder how much fatter he’s gotten since he left; that child could really eat.” And then the silhouette of him, the place he tucked his little hand against my clavicle, is suddenly ten point one kilos heavy with how very gone he is.

Baby Jean - photocred MercyShips

And Baby Grace; her mama wrote today that she remembers me and wonders when I’m coming over. I have missed her the way a sprain feels – not bad until a movement puts pressure on it, and then taking over one’s entire world for that moment. Titus, Essie, the McKinley kids, Ismail, Grace, Baby Jean, these are the closest thing to children for me, and I want them all back so badly, even though they were never remotely mine.

Baby Grace, not long ago

And I’ve been thinking about you – Mother’s Day and all, but also how you don’t seem to cling to things the way I do. I miss these children that aren’t mine, but I am yours.  And how do you do it – let me go, again and again?

photocred Mom

I don’t stay well; I never have. This weekend I hiked to beautiful twin lakes in volcanic craters. I kept finding side trails and things to explore. My friends joked, “we need a wander alert bracelet for you.” I agreed, because exploring is what I always want to do. Even when I have things and people to stay for, I am restless.

our Twin Lakes hiking gang

Even when I’m with you, I’m worrying, wondering, fidgeting, planning and then I’m gone. I spent the past four years figuring out how I would move away again.  I know you love me enough to miss me, so how do you let me go and how do you not mull over it?

on a log at the top of Ekom falls - photocred my friend Xin 

We are cleaning the hospital wards – literally, down on my hands and knees scrubbing under the bedframes with Tristal – and packing our belongings – I have given away three quarters of what I brought, I can’t sustainably carry more than 7 kgs backpacking – and letting patients go now.  Most are returning to their homes with the bright pink of new skin along the incision that marks a tumor excision, a list of pelvic exercises to strengthen after vesicovaginal fistula repair, little lovable notches that are the only reminder of a once-bifurcated lip, packets of oral swabs and chlorhexidine rinse. One is being handed over to the UN Commission for Refugees for follow up. Another is going to a local hospital for palliative care. “You won’t forget me?” said a patient yesterday, running her hands up and down my arm. “Of course not,” I told her, “I can’t forget you.” And I thought of God in Isaiah 49 – “can a woman forget the child of her womb? Neither can I forget you.” So how do moms let their children go, just hoping they’ll come back? 

mist on one of the crater lakes - photocred my friend Chelsea

If I’ve learned anything about God during these weeks in Cameroon, it’s just been repeat lessons of what I’ve learned the past few years – that He doesn’t mind being the last pick, the nothing-else-works choice, the “I guess I’ll come wandering back now.” Not only does He not mind, but He’s delighted to be the one wandered back to. This God, to me, feels more like a mother than a father – maybe because you’ve always been so delighted when I come wandering back.

I thought it was funny how much my profile looks like Dad's in this pic of me carrying a baby on the ward

Happy Mother’s Day to a mom who lets me go wandering and waits eagerly for me to come back, who doesn’t live in the shadow of clinging grief, who makes God more lovable to me.

Tab