In the short time I was gone, down on the Dolphin Coast, springtime came to Pretoria. And what a glorious beauty she is. Suddenly there are leaves on the trees, the bees are buzzing, and there’s a smell of cherry blossoms (or some other lovely smelling blossom!) wafting around us. After what feels like a long, dreary winter, made a million times worse due to the pandemic… the shot of hope and new life is truly welcome.
South Africa went into lockdown on March 25, with one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. We weren’t even allowed to go for a walk with our dogs. Gradually, the rules have been relaxed, bit by bit, and a few weeks ago they relaxed the prohibition on inter-provincial travel. Finally. I booked a pet-friendly Air B&B, packed up enough stuff for a week and Jay and I headed down to the coast.
This part of South Africa is called the Dolphin Coast, and it’s definitely the right name; four times in the days I was there I watched in awe as a huge pod of dolphins jumped and played in the surf. I didn’t manage to get any photos, because I couldn’t do anything but stand there with a huge grin on my face. It is also whale migration season, so pretty much anytime you looked out after just a few minutes you’d see whales jumping, or rather, the splash they left behind.
Jay loved the beach, and it was almost completely empty. I was able to let him off the leash and he barked at the waves, rolled in dead fish, sniffed everything. He’s not much of a swimmer but he did splash around a little, especially in the rocky areas where there were tide pools and puddles.
There’s something magical about water; just looking at it brings a sense of calm over me. I say I can feel my blood pressure going down and the stresses of the week or month or year just melt away. I’ve lived on water my entire life; I grew up on Lake Superior and we spent our summers at a lake cabin in central Minnesota. After that, I lived in Seattle for almost a decade, where Puget Sound and Lake Washington and Lake Stevens and Lake Union were constantly waving to me through my car windows. Then I lived in Benin as a Peace Corps Volunteer, the only two years of my life I wasn’t within a few minutes of a large body of water. Then I lived in Freetown, Conakry, Pointe Noire, Toamasina, Cotonou, Boston, and Monrovia. What do all these cities have in common? The coast.
So living in Pretoria is certainly different; it’s high altitude and very dry, and quite a distance from any body of water. But, it’s a short flight to the coast, and not expensive, so I managed to get there often enough that I didn’t really miss it. Until lockdown. Suddenly, I am stuck in a tiny province known only for it’s metro areas, and I can’t leave. After a few months I was filled with the deep longing and no way to fulfil it.
So that’s why, as soon as it was allowed, I made plans to visit the sea. Jay did great, no car sickness at all during the seven-hour drive, and the only challenge we had was his poor little paws were rubbed raw by the sand as we walked on the first day. But he healed up quickly and his paws became used to it and we ran and we played and we loved the wind, the waves, the salty air and the sand in all it’s beauty and glory.
Never underestimate the power of a change of scenery. Before we left I was truly in the depths of despair; the winter had been long, the loneliness of lockdown was heaver than I realized. Work was feeling crazy and I found myself hating this dream job I love and knew something needed to change. By the time I drove back I was looking forward to coming home, the house that had felt like a jail was suddenly a place of comfort; having gotten on top of some outstanding work things made me feel better in control and able to handle whatever was thrown at me next. And I’ll head back to the beach in a few weeks’ time; something to look forward to is critical and such a relief, after so many months with nothing good on the horizon.
There’s something about writing.
It’s like I get all these words and thoughts and feelings and questions swirling around in my brain and the only thing that calms it is putting it into words. Because by wrangling it all into a form that can be read and understood by others, I also start to understand it for myself… and own it, and wrestle out the things that need to be wrestled out, decide what needs deciding…and move on.
I’ve missed this. I have so many things swirling.
And there’s a rush of pleasure, bringing order to the chaos; pulling the words out of the swirling to make sense on the page, it’s a relief when just the right words fall into just the exact right order to convey perfectly what it is I’m thinking or feeling or longing for or dreaming. I imagine it’s a similar feeling when a painter looks at the completed canvas, when it reflects back to them that thing that was in them that needed to get out. This is my art form.
And I couldn’t possibly care less how many people read it. Maybe I’m just writing for my mom. That’s fine with me. Maybe it’s a writer thing, but if there are words that are in me that need to be in the world, it’s just my job to put them into the world. Whether or not anyone reads them is not up to me. It’s a relief when we can let go of the pressure to control things that are inherently outside of our control.
I wrote at krissyonmercy.blogspot.com for eight wonderful years, some of the best words that have ever come out of my fingertips. I’m so proud of them, of that season, of the challenges I faced and conquered, and of the person I became as a result. But also, the change didn’t stop when the season did. If anything, it’s accelerated. When your life feels defined by the current moment, whether it be your Peace Corps service, the raising of small kids, the art you’re currently devoted to, the work you’re pouring out while living on a ship, or whatever else, it can feel as though that defining thing will always be the defining thing. But then, as it does, the sun rises and the sun sets and the years pass and we move into the next chapter or season or space, and the events that once defined us turn into that one thing that happened that one time, and life continues on.
Let Us Begin has been perking for awhile. That fateful trip to the Kennedy museum was November 18, 2017. I’ve said that I believe there is a book in me to write someday; maybe it’s called Let Us Begin, maybe it isn’t, but when the time is right it’ll happen. In the meantime, I’m excited to have built this new thing that more accurately represents the person I am right now, where I can share wonderings and wanderings and ponderings and anything else that feels right.
So I guess that’s all to say, I feel a push inside of me to engage with my art in a more intentional way, which feels a bit scary and vulnerable and exciting and hopeful, all at the same time. And the words that keep ringing around in my head are exactly this: Let Us Begin. So this is me, beginning this next thing. Thanks for joining me.
Welcome to my new blog, the wonderings and wanderings of a global nomad.
I chose this title because of a quote etched into the stone walls of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library just outside of Boston, MA. When I read this quote my breath caught in my lungs and I felt a warmth spread through my entire being. I knew at that moment I’d found the title of the book I think might be somewhere inside of me. Kennedy spoke these words in his inaugural address, after outlining all the hopes and dreams of his administration as they stepped onto the world stage:
All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
Regardless of how audacious the goal, or how unlikely the dream, or how enormous the impact we long to have or build or leave, it’s worth beginning. So let us begin.
Let us begin 