It’s overcast this morning, and the trees are bare, stripped by the salt water rained down by the last typhoon. The clouds precede another storm circling in the Pacific, trying to make up its mind about where it will go. Sitting next to the air conditioning, it almost feels like fall.
Fall is the hardest time to be away from “home.” Looking at the gray, churning East China Sea, I miss everywhere we have been all at once. I miss the Ponderosa Pines of Arizona, nestled under the Mogollon Rim. I miss Oklahoma and its crisp nights and football rivalries. I miss San Onofre Beach—deserted, sunny, and perfect in October. I miss the foliage beginning to turn in Virginia and the mums that suddenly spill off every porch in the neighborhood.
Most of all, I miss my family and friends. I miss the apples at my grandparents’ Orchard House—the ones I used to start cursing in the summer when the trees sagged with fruit and it became clear that we would pick and press and shovel and dump apples until well past Thanksgiving. I miss getting together with family and friends in October to pick and press cider. Apples here cost nearly four dollars a pound, but I pay it anyway and wish there were Granny Smiths for a pie or Galas for bubbling homemade applesauce.
I know the name of this overcast feeling that creeps up on me sometimes—his name is grief. We hang out for a while, maybe go through a few tissues and photo albums, but I know not to let him stay too long. I call or skype back to the states—to my people, thankful for technology that allows us to see each other if only through a screen. I invest in today, into the people that God has placed in front of me. I pay attention to now, knowing that in a few years, I will weep when we leave, and I will add to my list of people and spaces I miss.
So I let go of a deep sigh and breathe a moment of thanks. Thanks for the steps that have brought me here—to today, to this place, to these people. Thanks for the the dear ones who stay behind, loving, supporting, and grieving in their own ways. Thanks to God who holds us all together, through storms and time and space. Thankful that somehow, there is joy– even when my soul is a bit overcast.