We've been cleaning out the basement 'round my parents' place. Well. Trying. We spent an hour on it last night, okay? One entire hour, which ended when my dad started picking up random boxes and shoving things in my direction for my decision-making while I was trying to sort through other boxes, upon which I started (mentally) shrieking and flapping my arms and running in little circles. My ADHD couldn't handle it. So I proposed that we all give up and play cards, which we did.
I threw away many things that have sentimental value. Fine, everything has sentimental value to me, but I threw away quite a few of those things. One of the things I pulled out of a box was a little silvery bag filled with beaded stars. The wire running through the stars was rusty and they didn't sparkle anymore, so I ended up throwing them away, but it was hard.
When I moved to Rwanda 7+ years ago, my family sent wrapped Christmas presents with me. I woke up on Christmas Day, 2002, alone in a hotel in Kigali. I went to church at the tent church (where I made the mistake of giving my phone number to a couple of students, including one guy who proceeded to call me incessantly from a variety of numbers asking to meet me until I forced him to tell me what he wanted and he said he loved me and I yelled at him and told him I would change my phone number if he ever called me again. Keep in mind that I had met him ONCE. I think I gave him, and about four girls, a ride back to the university.).
Then I drove back to Kibuye alone. It was a beautiful sunny day in Rwanda, and I had only driven to Kibuye alone a few times. I still had to guess at the turn in Gitarama.
At home, in my house surrounded by pines, I decorated for Christmas with some pine branches and candles. I made a little Advent wreath. And then I called my family and opened the presents they had sent alone in my little house while they stood in a crowded dining room surrounded by noise. One of the presents I opened, wrapped months before in Michigan, was the little bag of beaded stars.
I wasn't lonely. Isn't that strange? I think if I spent Christmas alone now, I would be lonely. But I wasn't lonely that Christmas in Rwanda, the only Christmas I have ever spent away from my family.
I threw the stars away, last night, because it's just gross to hold on to rusty bits of metal, but there is a big part of me that wanted to keep them, forever. Cleaning, I happened upon so many things that I had forgotten, so many stories almost lost. I found scraps of paper that told of moments I had forgotten - a receipt on which I wrote while sitting on a pier in the Hudson River in New York, a carbon copy of an order on which I wrote while in a meeting in Rwanda. On one paper, I narrated the happenings at T. and M.'s house in Kibuye, one Sunday afternoon.
It scares me how the stories get lost. My stories, yes, but even more it scares me how the stories of my ancestors get lost. So many of them are already gone.
I threw away many things that have sentimental value. Fine, everything has sentimental value to me, but I threw away quite a few of those things. One of the things I pulled out of a box was a little silvery bag filled with beaded stars. The wire running through the stars was rusty and they didn't sparkle anymore, so I ended up throwing them away, but it was hard.
When I moved to Rwanda 7+ years ago, my family sent wrapped Christmas presents with me. I woke up on Christmas Day, 2002, alone in a hotel in Kigali. I went to church at the tent church (where I made the mistake of giving my phone number to a couple of students, including one guy who proceeded to call me incessantly from a variety of numbers asking to meet me until I forced him to tell me what he wanted and he said he loved me and I yelled at him and told him I would change my phone number if he ever called me again. Keep in mind that I had met him ONCE. I think I gave him, and about four girls, a ride back to the university.).
Then I drove back to Kibuye alone. It was a beautiful sunny day in Rwanda, and I had only driven to Kibuye alone a few times. I still had to guess at the turn in Gitarama.
At home, in my house surrounded by pines, I decorated for Christmas with some pine branches and candles. I made a little Advent wreath. And then I called my family and opened the presents they had sent alone in my little house while they stood in a crowded dining room surrounded by noise. One of the presents I opened, wrapped months before in Michigan, was the little bag of beaded stars.
I wasn't lonely. Isn't that strange? I think if I spent Christmas alone now, I would be lonely. But I wasn't lonely that Christmas in Rwanda, the only Christmas I have ever spent away from my family.
I threw the stars away, last night, because it's just gross to hold on to rusty bits of metal, but there is a big part of me that wanted to keep them, forever. Cleaning, I happened upon so many things that I had forgotten, so many stories almost lost. I found scraps of paper that told of moments I had forgotten - a receipt on which I wrote while sitting on a pier in the Hudson River in New York, a carbon copy of an order on which I wrote while in a meeting in Rwanda. On one paper, I narrated the happenings at T. and M.'s house in Kibuye, one Sunday afternoon.
It scares me how the stories get lost. My stories, yes, but even more it scares me how the stories of my ancestors get lost. So many of them are already gone.
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