Purple Trees and Reflections of Eden

When I was a very little girl, I had a preschool teacher that wouldn't let me color the trees purple. Mrs. Billings said, "We must color trees green because trees ARE green." Purple crayons were reserved for carebears, eggplants, and parts of rainbows. I think, in hindsight, that the imagination of poor Mrs. Billings must have have been seriously undernourished. She just couldn't find it within herself to believe in purple trees; but as a small, fanciful child, even after submitting to the "green tree rule," I still held out hope that somewhere, purple trees really did exist.

On our morning bike rides, we drive past dozens of wisteria-purple "Jacaranda" trees. I love living in a place where reality is just as vivid and colorful as my imagination. Australians seem to take the Jacaranda for granted. Many think the Jacaranda quite ordinary, but I think each one is a miracle. Every Jacaranda tree seems to me like something from the other side of the rainbow, something from the land of dragons and elfs, that has accidentally wandered over.

Imagine a tree as tall as a live oak (35 ft or 6.5 m tall). In your mind, where you would usually see the vivid green of spring foliage, replace it with purple blooms so thick that they cast a blue light under the shade of the tree. Riding along the bike path into the shade of a jacaranda is like riding suddenly from bright sunlight into bright moonlight and back again where the shade ends. Seeing them in bloom every morning is truly magical, and I am actually glad that I had to wait so long to see my first long-awaited purple tree. Honestly, if I had seen them earlier in life, I would be truly disappointed not to see unicorns grazing in the fields nearby.

I am clearly a tree-lover (I even love green trees), and there is a part of a verse about trees in the Garden of Eden that I have always loved. In Genesis three it reads, "Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day. . ." When I look at the t.v. or the Internet, I struggle to believe that a perfect place, created for mankind, ever existed. When I watch the news, I see only war, rumors of war, abuse, genocide, and hopelessness. There is just so much evil in our world. The holiness of Eden has been shattered into a million pieces like a smashed mirror.

The despair all around can be so thick, but when I step into the broad-day moonlight under a jacaranda tree, I begin to regain hope for the redemption of this old, broken-down world, and for my own heart. Every morning, the Jacaranda tree reminds me that I still see reflections of Eden when I look for them, and that if I listen hard as the wind gently brushes past the purple trees, I can still hear the sound of God as he moves through the cool of the day.

The Jacaranda is the lavender purple tree under which Jordan is standing with her bike. The hot pink tree in the foreground is a rhododendron, I think.

The Fortress of Family Dinners

When Greg and I were newly married, we really wanted to travel, but travelling was just not a possibility when two adults and a tiny but expensive baby split Greg's two-tears-out-of-college salary three ways. Oh, did I mention that I was also in graduate school? Well, needless to say, travelling was put on the back-burner for a while while we were learning to live family life on a tight budget. Instead of traveling, I decided to take us on a world tour of foods via my new, wedding-present cookbooks. Much to Greg's dismay, I also made up "recipes" when the urge to be creative struck.

Our food journey took Greg and I through the cuisine of the USA, Mexico, Italy, and Asia with many successes, and many different types of failures. Did you know that if you don't take your Cuisinart blender completely apart to clean it after making homemade guacamole, it will stink like rotten avocados for weeks? Did you know that 8 cloves of garlic in Thai Chicken Sate will keep vampires AND friends at a distance? Did you know you can burn green beans and peas? Did you know that chicken cooked in soy sauce and mango puree (one of my invented recipes) tastes worse than anything else I have ever tasted? All in all, the food tour was a great experience for me in learning to cook good food at a time when we didn't have extra money for going out to eat. Over time, the sampling of interesting homemade foods evolved into the habit of eating together as a family, although many nights were pretty crazy and loud and wordless in the early days of our family life, when Jordan and Meryl were small, screamy infants.

We have done family dinners most nights for the past 9 years, and by now, I am a fantastic home "chef," even if I do say so myself. Our dinners were a wonderful part of our day when we lived in Austin, but I think with all the changes we have experienced in moving to Australia, our family dinners are more important here than they ever were in Texas. There is a comfort to coming home and regaining your balance by repeating the same routine every evening. There is great hope in share your dreams with those who will cheer you on. There is a peace in processing the day out loud before an audience that loves you unconditionally and wants the best for you.

Our conversations vary from night to night, but some themes run continuously through our time together at this stage of life. Jordan talks about "beating the boys" in anything that can be made into a competition. Last month, we had to suppress laughter after hearing that she had defended her friends by literally whacking the boys with her lunchbox. Meryl is always planning her next birthday party, what she and her friends will do and wear, and who can be invited. The big girls dream out loud about true love and marriage and wedding dresses (which is surreal and unbelievable because they are nearly 6 and 7 and a half). Micah Jade, who is two, contributes most of the comedy, since she has a little trouble keeping up with the conversation. In the middle of serious conversation, she is very likely to bring up dolphins and dugongs (the Aussie version of the manatee). She also gives reports on the number of trucks she has seen in a day. (These reports are particularly colorful because she substitutes "f" for the "tr" sound.) We hear about Daddy's projects and his "work friends," and his bike rides, basketball games and bike wrecks. I tell them about all the new and interesting people I am meeting and what animals we saw in the bike way. We eat good home-cooked meals and bravely try new recipes together. I look forward to sharing the comfort of companionship every evening.

The way that my life turns never ceases to surprise me. Until last year, I had always thought that Greg and I had missed our chance to travel and find new adventures abroad when we had Jordan a year and a month after we were married. I never dreamed that the creativity developed in and guided by architecture school could be best spent on cooking family meals and finding ways to draw each member of the family into meaningful conversation. I never thought that our dinners as a family would be transported across the Pacific, worlds away from where it started. When I was 23 and burning broccoli in the early stages of my cooking experiments, I never imagined that those very experiments would evolve into treasured time together each night.

Now, in a place where so many things are still foreign to us, and where we sometimes feel alien or lonely, every evening, Greg, Jordan, Meryl, MJ and I return to the same table, to the same comfort of life together. We may talk about birthdays and dugongs and far-off weddings, but what we are building is far larger than than those things. Every night we build more of the strong fortress of our own family, so that when hard times come to each of us, as they will, we will have a place of strong refuge in being together.

Lice and Lies

As I combed the lice and eggs out of my own long, thick hair, I contemplated employing the razor that I saw nearby, but vanity stopped me. I was not so sure that I could pull off the whole bronze glam thing (that's how I picture myself, apparently) as a brown Sinead O'connor. So, I kept combing and combing until my scalp hurt and finally, my neon comb came up clean.

I had gone to the chemist and talked to a lady that looked very official. She could tell that I was freaked out. She tried to tell me that it was okay, and that many families get lice. "It is no comment on your hygiene," she said sympathetically. I tried look neutral but if you have ever seen me attempt to suppress emotion, you'll know that I was probably not very successful. Then, the kind chemist tried to sell me some "natural" Aussie remedy. (Many Aussies seem to like the most natural way of doing anything.) I proudly told her that I was American, and that I wanted to use more of a "shock and awe" method. She reluctantly sold me KB24, which was supposed to kill whole cities of lice and their eggs. That was what we needed, I was sure, something really toxic that would make your eyes sting and your lips tingle if it accidentally touched them.

I spent the day stripping beds, washing sheets in boiling water, bathing and combing little girls. I was so irritated and appalled and cranky. It is all very fine for Meryl and Jordan and Micah Jade to have lice. In fact, if Meryl's head hadn't itched so badly, she would have been glad to be the caretaker of a whole civilization, like Horton in Horton Hears a Who. Lice are normal for school kids, but it is a different thing entirely for glamorous, quirky, athletic, cool me to have lice.

Greg couldn't see why I was in such a panicked state. He calmly told me that he had lice when he was a kid, and that by the time his mom knew, he had picked out and killed most of them, himself. (This is a shocking story, I know.) He kept laughing at me and shrugging and making "heebie geebie" faces until he realized how unsettled I was. In case you don't know my husband, Greg has the ability to pierce to the truth with me like no one else; that's one of the reasons I like him so much. He gently and kindly asks the right questions. Finally, he looked hard at me and said, "Babe, it's gross, but why is this bothering you so much?"

Then it hit me. The lice in my own hair bothers me so much because I don't totally buy the truths that I am selling to my kids. I believe some lies instead. I am teaching that the "inside of a person is more important than the outside," that it's important to take good care of yourself, but it's more important to be kind to others," that "man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart." Here I was with a chance to live out the truths I say I believe; but instead a few small insects laid bare the falsehood in my own heart. Lice are gross on little kids, especially when you have to comb them out and look at them. They are grosser still in my own hair, but what's worse than lice is secretly overvaluing my image and appearance and therefore being unkind to and impatient with my children, who innocently and unknowingly shared the lice.

Ugliness in the heart is a terrible problem, but fortunately, I know a God that is in the business of regenerating the ugliness inside into something beautiful. I'm not there yet, but as I see myself for what I really am, I hope I can give God room to work on the inside of me when I need a serious tune-up. Maybe when he's done with His work, I will be rid of lice and lies.

A Legacy In Bloom

We had a great day at Australia Zoo, but I was fighting back tears as I looked at the memorial sculpture of Steve and Terri Irwin and their children Bindi and Robert. The bronze had frozen the Irwin family in time, in a happy moment, all together with their favorite thing all around--wildlife. The zoo that they have built with their own hands and out of their own hearts' vision was thriving around us, and the articulation of their vision is a triumphant, happy thing; but, as a mother and a wife, the moment captured by the sculptor made my heart ache for Terri and her kids, even as Steve's dreams blossomed in every direction.

The zoo was beautiful, both physically and ideologically. It was totally oriented around Steve Irwin's vision--"get the public a close-up encounter with fantastic wild creatures, and everyone will catch the vision for conservation." I had marvelled at Steve feeding and wrestling (for some reason--maybe mowing the grass?) his crocodiles Acco and Agro on one of his shows, and it was unbelievable to "meet" them in person. When I "wrangled" the twelve-inch garter snake in my compost pile in Austin, I borrowed the technique that Steve had used to capture a deadly and venomous Australian brown snake that now lives in the snake house. I have often thought, at Steve's prompting, about how highways infringe on the habitat of kangaroos in Australia, and now I have fed some of the ones that have been rescued. In many ways, Steve had helped form my vision of conservation and environmental protection in Australia, and in general.

I have loved Steve Irwin's enthusiasm ever since I first discovered his show, when I was in university. Every animal, no matter how small or common was a "little beauty" and "gorgeous." I think that because Steve Irwin had so much child-like enthusiasm, He and Terri designed Australia Zoo to be a wonderful, experience hands-on encounter for kids. The zoo has fossil digs and free rides, free shows and keepers that talk about the animals and answer questions. It has life sized sculptures of crocs and playgrounds near ice cream shops. Australia Zoo is totally child-centric, and the experience inspired Jordan, Meryl and Micah Jade to share in the Irwins' excitement about wildlife. Like Steve Irwin, Australia Zoo is "larger than life."

Steve Irwin may have passed away, but his legacy lives on. On speakers all throughout the park, we heard his voice and his ideas. His happy face still adorns walls and shops and calendars. We experienced his vision in the zoo itself, which will carry on under Terri's capable management. We even stood in a line for a ride with his 6-year-old son Robert, who is the "spitting image" of Steve Irwin himself. Steve's children will know him in a way, through his work and his videos, even though he is gone. His life is a story of family and dreams and tireless work toward conservation, and by any objective standard he has moved mountains.

As I looked on the sculpture of the Irwin family, I pondered the successful legacy of Steve Irwin that flourishes, even with the sadness of his family living without him. Steve's legacy made me consider my own legacy, as yet unfinished and undetermined. I hope I have 60 more years with Greg and Jordan, Meryl, and Micah. I want to have a lifetime of comfort and encouragement and clean shirts and hot, homemade meals to offer to Greg. I hope I will get to continue to teach my girls that it is "more important to be kind than pretty," until they are all strong women, marked by the fragrance of love for others. I want to be able to somehow share God's love with people beyond my family and close circle of friends. I hope I have a lifetime of memories still to make, but I know tomorrow is not promised to anyone, not even to me. Therefore, today, let me cheerfully plug away solidifying all these hopes into my own legacy, so that when I am gone, my legacy, like Steve Irwin's, will bloom around those I love.

Walking on Water

I was paralyzed with terror. I lay on my board, ready to catch the perfect wave, trying to recall the moves we had learned on shore, trying be brave. The six foot swells were huge and powerful, clear and bluer than the sky. They rolled toward the dazzling, white shoreline without any regard for me. I was in the ocean, on a rented, red surf board, in a foreign country, without anyone to rescue me; and I felt intensely alone.

It had been my idea to bring my brother out here for surf lessons. I had chosen Coolangatta beach after taking recommendations from several friends. I had rented the little white Corolla and driven an hour and a half. I even sweet-talked the budget rent-a-car guy into letting me use a copy of my license instead of the real thing. (my kids lost it, and the new one is coming soon.) I took a friend up on an offer to watch MJ, and we had set out at 6:45 this morning. Surfing looks amazingly cool on t.v. and, in my mind, I am pretty cool. Everyone who is "pretty cool" should definitely surf, especially if relocated to Australia for a few years. I had wanted so much to come and try surfing. Why, then, was I so afraid?

When I was a little and not-so-little girl, I remember being afraid. I was afraid of my shadow, the gremlins under my bed, and the bigfoot that had come all the way from arkansas specifically to hide in my closet. (I wonder how I convinced my mom to let me watch that show?) I felt intuitively that the world was not safe, and thus, that sharks could swim through drainage pipes to swimming pools, and that gnarly trolls really did lurk under bridges. I was afraid of the dark and ghost stories and burglers, of bears and wolves and bad men who lived in dark caves (think Tom Sawyer). As I grew older, I began to cherish my collection of fears, as if each was a truth. A collection of fears is a dark thing, like a bunch of jars containing dead animals on whom lab experiments have gone wrong. You can't keep a gross collection like that hidden forever, especially if you are occasionally adding to it.

Shortly before moving to Australia, I started to work on clearing out my fear collection, mostly because it was exploding out of the containing room and contaminating the important areas of my life. Looking through all that cherished garbage was hard and discouraging work, so I confided in my husband and friends, read my Bible more, hired a shrink, and a doctor who believed in Zoloft-- for a time. One by one, I have been tossing out those ugly old jars that I had cherished so much. I am totally committed to replacing them with a collection of shiny truths.

And yet, with all my theoretical commitment to living in truth, as I lay on my board, those ugly old jars of fear that I had thought I had thrown out kept popping up in my mind. "You aren't really a good athlete. You aren't strong enough to surf. If you can't do it perfectly, don't bother. Everyone will laugh when you fall. Was that a shark? " I took a breath, and in my mind, I started to chuck jars and collect truths right there on the board, alone among the massive waves. (to myself) "I am a pretty good athlete, especially considering that I am 31 and have three kids." Throw the first jar, Elissa. "I am strong enough to do most things decently, and only God is perfect." Jars two and three are airborn. "Whether people laugh at me or applaud me for hours, the opinion of others doesn't matter." Chuck the fourth, girl. "God loves me, and everything that comes to my life will be for my good. If that means a shark, bring him on. I wonder how he'll like it when I make a necklace from his teeth."

As I launched the last of those poisonous thoughts, the instructor, who had been nearby all along, gave me a push. "Go! get up! You can do it!" he shouted, cheerfully. I took a deep breath and I pushed myself up. I stood on the board and I stood on the truth, and I rode my very first wave to shore, no longer afraid to walk on water.

Family Magic at Bribie Island

I absolutely love the ocean--in a slightly dysfunctional way, if I am honest. I'm obsessed with the sea in the same way that I am obsessed with the weather channel and vintage clothes and gardening and fried shrimp. The love I feel for the ocean, and hence the beach, is a quirky love, like a parent with grown-up children, who misses them and thus dresses the family dog in a purple rain suit. I can never get enough of the salt air and the rhythm of the waves and the roar of the wind in the evening. If I had the choice, I would never leave.

I grew up near a beach with lovely brown water fringed with fluffy beige foam from the industrial factories nearby. Hidden within the water were black chunks of tar that had be removed with publicly available tar soap. It wasn't a spectacular beach, to say the least, but one of the advantages of growing up near Galveston Island, TX, is that I can enjoy nearly any beach without much criticism or unmet expectation. As a child, all I noticed about the beach was the fun in the sand and the time with my family all together, relaxing. We were there with no agenda, no hurry, no schedule. My mom, from whom I have inherited a "touch" of OCD, would dig in the sand for hours to help me create the perfect sand castle or hole. She even tried to help me protect it from my brother Jonathan, who was, and is, a force of entropy, especially when it relates to artistically built sand. My dad, who just can't swim at all, braved strong rip currents and huge mocha swells to pull our rafts through enormous waves, specifically in order to hear my brother and I shrieking with joy. Well, I guess I was shrieking. Jonathan was usually begging him to takes us deeper to more dangerous adventures. All my family memories sanctify and cleanse Galveston beach to my memory, but as I look back at it through my objective adult eyes, the beach itself was not the creator of family magic. The ocean was only the backdrop, but it is the backdrop with which I am most familiar.

Since I love the beach so much, and since Greg loves me so much, it was fairly natural for the Mizell family to choose a beach for our first family camping trip, which also coincided with my brotherJonathan's first visit to Australia. We were so excited about having a great place to bring Uncle Jona when he came to visit, and we even scoped out the ocean-side beach at Bribie Island two weekends before he arrived, to make sure it was sufficiently spectacular.

In order to drive out to our remote campsite, we had to wait until low tide, which happened to be around 1 pm on Thursday when we left. Greg made the mistake of giving me a chart that tells the tides for the rest of the year. I may have to hide it from myself to make sure that I don't nourish the obsessive compulsive that lurks within me (thanks mom!). Driving at any time that was farther away from low tide than 2 hours on either side would mean driving through thick dry sand, where the potential for getting stuck increases exponentially. Driving at low tide, we drove on the sand that had been packed by the tide. The sand was white and fine and beautiful, and as smooth as an interstate (in Texas--not Louisiana). The scenic drive down eighteen kilometers of beach took us past 4 salt water lagoons and along-side perfect, untouched mangrove and eucalyptus forests that swayed in time with the coastal breezes. We had the whole car loaded down with entirely too much gear and food, and the load on the roof made the car nearly 10 feet tall.

Our planning and packing had taken a little too long, and so we were going to make the drive within the last 30 minutes of the end of the low tide window, which made me a little nervous. Fortunately, we made all the way up the coast without any sort of incident, even with the turquoise tide rising. On the way up from the tide-packed sand to driveway 16 and campsite 50, where we would reside for 3 days, we had to drive across the soft sand. It is likely that the extra weight from "dark Jona" (my pet name for my beloved brother), helped get us stuck in the sand, although it could possibly have been the extra 500 lbs of gear and food. At any rate, the most eventful part of the trip occurred at the beginning when the car got stuck. Thankfully, Greg and Jonathan were brilliant and strong, and they dislodged our huge white "Landie" with no trouble at all.

We set up our campsite, and commmenced with relaxation. During the three days we spent at Bribie Island, we were completely isolated from civilization. We accidently lost our phones. We heard no news. We were there to enjoy nature and eachother. We were there to create our own foundation of family memories for my girls, and to share our family life and love with Jonathan, who has yet to settle down into the stability and happiness and loud craziness where we live daily.

Greg and Jonathan fished and spear-fished, and between the two of them, 4 fish lost their scaly lives. The girls also caught some clams for uncle jona to sample. All the seafood would have tasted great on the grill if we had been able to remove a just little more sand. I guess we have inadvertantly discovered the reason for buying your fresh fish and clams at a market or store. Good fish fillets would have been a nice side product of the time invested in fishing, but really, the main point of fishing, for my husband and my brother, was to spend time together and to build new memories, inside jokes, and reasons to razz eachother.

Jordan, Meryl, and Micah Jade are learning to look for new adventures every day, and running wild at Bribie was easy experience in adventure-seeking for them and great food for their imaginations. Jordan and Meryl loved living in their tent. Their sleeping bags were gritty and occasionally invaded by ants hoping for a bite of the leftovers on their clothes. Amazingly, when you are a small, imaginitave child, it takes more than ants and sand to disrupt your own little world created within your magical purple tent. They awoke at dawn both mornings, ready for whatever the sand and sea would bring. They explored the bathroom, and found out that Meryl was not heavy enough to flush the toilet with its funny footpad flusher. (Jordan was just barely heavy enough if she jumped.) Jordan discovered a wallaby with its joey at the bathroom, and all three girls crept close enough to see the baby embracing its mother, during a playful boxing session. Digging holes and sandy pools, that would later terrorize the suspension systems of four-wheel-driving vehicles at low tide, occupied a great deal of Jordan and Meryl's time on the beach. Micah Jade floated between the big girls and "mum," afraid that somehow, I might escape Bribie without her. My three little girls were caked with sunscreen and white-sand from head to toe by the time we left. Their skin turned golden, their matted hair went sun-streaked, and generally, they began to look like shipwrecked children in a movie--wild and brown. I hope Jordan and Meryl and Micah Jade never lose their appetite for adventure. I hope Greg and I can teach consequence without teaching fear. Most of all, I hope they are always a little wild and magical, like they are right now.

Most of my weekend enjoyment was spent playing with the girls, laughing with Greg and Jonathan, and talking about our lives. I loved watching the people I love most enjoying nature and each other, but at the end of the second day, I had a chance to walk down the beach alone. I love walking on the beach alone, which is a little funny, since generally, I am not a huge fan of solitude. Beach-walking is a different thing, altogether, for some reason, and I have loved that brand of solitude since I was a small child. There was hardly anyone around on the end where I walked, so I sang as loud as I wanted to, and walked in the waves and natural sand pools as the tide came in. I gathered shells and clams and snails for the kids, and I imagined what would be up ahead on the beach and in my life. I have always been a little bit dreamy, but the rhythm of the ocean never fails to bring my imagination out with power.

All the walking, two hours worth, made me ponder the way that the Australian landscape is affecting me. I love Texas and the beauty of America, but Australia is just so different to me. I feel close to creation and to its Creator in a way that I have never before experienced. It is kind of like if you had a favorite artist who painted really beautiful still lifes. Imagine you had memorized every painting and thought that you could never like anything more. The Australian landscape in general, and Bribie Island in particular is like finding whole new collections of paintings by your favorite artist, now painting new subject matter in a new ways. I find the beauty of each new place that I go powerful that it literally brings me to tears.

In every way, our camping trip was a success. We played and laughed and pretended and dug and dreamed all weekend. We are building the foundation of family memories for our marriage and for our family so that our girls can look back as I can, to beautiful times in happy places. I say, bring on the adventures. Bring on new places and new people and new experience. May the Creator who has made so many majestic places, weave the new things in our lives into new kinds of beauty in our marriage and family. To the untrained eye, our weekend may have been mostly sand and ants, but to us, camping at Bribie Island will always be a magical memory.

Sharing the Simple Things

Today my brother Jonathan came from the USA to spend nearly two weeks with my family here in Brisbane, Qld, Australia. After a good solid continental breakfast, complete with homemade bran muffins, Greg went to work; and Jonathan and I set off on bikes with my three girls, ready for the start of his adventures in Oz. Jordan rode her bike, and Meryl and Micah Jade graced the trailer with all 60 lbs of their combined weight. Even though they don't do any peddling, they were so excited to show Uncle Jona how they "rode" to school. In my (correct) opinion, a better label for what they do is-- "cruise while mommy gets thinner".

It was so lovely to be able to show my brother the track that we take to school. I was so proud of Jordan, who rides all the way (4 miles) there and back without ever complaining. I was so thankful for my health and the opportunity to enjoy biking after a 15 year break. This place does not yet feel like home in many ways, and so I was astounded to feel such pride as I shared with my brother the beauty of the new landscape where I now reside. I guess if you admire a place for long enough, it becomes "yours".

The sun was already high in the sky, and the thick coolness, to which we have grown accustomed for our rides to school, had already vanished with the blue haze of early morn. The gum trees lined the Kedron brook and shaded our way on the path, fragrancing the air with a minty freshness. Most of the early morning animals had already retreated to their napping spots, but a bush turkey and some ducks and cows did see fit to grace us with their presence. We showed Uncle Jona the mulberry tree where we have partaken of nature's perfect (but very staining) snacks so often of late. The tree shared a few heart-shaped leaves for us to carry back to the last of our silk worms, who are busily spinning golden cacoons as they camp out on the side deck. Along the way back, we stopped to play for a while at the parks that usually tempt the children on the way to and from school. The girls particularly loved the park near school that had a "cubby house." I enjoyed watching them pretend at the job that I love so much.

So, here we are back at home, after an MJ nap, relaxing, and getting ready to share a homey meal together--my favorite time of day. I made one of my favorite dishes that I have had learned since moving to Oz--chicken and pumpkin curry.

It is so nice to have my brother here. Is it the comfort of being near to the person with the most intimate knowledge of what "home" was during my childhood? Is is because Jonathan is the same kind of different as me? Is it because having him see my experience makes it feel more real and less like a dream? I guess I will think on it, but for now, it is good to have a piece of home sharing my new home in a strange and beautiful new world.