Interruptions

One of my favorite little pleasures: hanging freshly washed sheets out to dry in the breeze on the line while standing in some pretty spot.  It’s been a while since I was privy to such a simple but lovely experience.  It’s calm and quiet; the sun shines through the cotton that gently billows and falls. The big tree overhead, the thick bladed grass.  A cat curled up by my laundry basket.  

Sometime mid-afternoon in this busy day of cleaning and preparing a group of little boys knocked on the door asking for a drink.  (folks often stop by on their way down the path and do this).  They were not expecting me to answer the door.  We have been so busy getting ready for the team coming in this weekend that I haven’t been out into the community yet.  They wanted to play with the small foosball board.  Toys and games are not lent out unsupervised.  So my tasks aside, I sat on the front deck with them for an hour or so. They yelled and wrestled wildly throughout, but it was pure pleasure to sit in a breezy corner of the deck and have nothing to do at that exact moment but enjoy the time with them. I frankly could not understand most of what they said. The island dialect and manner of speaking is not yet familiar.  I typically have to ask a child to repeat himself a few times, and then, maybe, I figure out what is being said.  I’m sure that will become easier with time.

I am quite sure that after this experience, should I ever have a place of my own, I want it to be quite small.  Sheila was in bed ill today so I was it for cleaning the main house/clinic.  It’s a big house.  I recruited one of the kids who is around a lot to help.  This young man loves to be a part of things, and Larry and Sheila work at providing him the love, structure and training he needs.   

So I spent the day doing laundry, baking bread and cleaning. I thought of Brother Laurence or Henri Nouwen’s Genesee Diary: men who spoke of their days in a monastery doing mundane tasks in the presence of the Holy, seemingly simple tasks becoming transcendent moments of worship.  Although I’m not sure they dealt with the same possibility for interruption- at any moment, like when I’m up to my elbows in flour, someone yells through the window for a cup of water, or the boys ask for a game. Sometimes though you just have to smile and embrace the “interruption”. 

The wind is stiff tonight. I can feel it shake the house a little.  It pours through my window in little bursts that swirl around me for a moment like a quick hug goodnight. I’m exhausted.