Destination: Moldova!

On Wednesday morning, I woke up and somehow just knew: Today is the day! I actually posted some musings on the topic before making the drive to my parents house – my “official” Peace Corps address.  Little bro wanted some help with a resume and I might as well make myself available for news to find me.  Around 3:00, my dad called up the stairs: Your package is here!  And everyone in the house – parents, grandmother, two brothers (and Zoe the dog) gathered round as I slid the paperwork out of the UPS envelope…..MOLDOVA!!!

That I am going to Moldova is another element in a long string of coincidences and serendipity that have trailed me since deciding to enter the Peace Corps.  My initial meeting was with a delightful recruiter who had served his two years in that country.  When I related this to my husband, he immediately locked onto the name – liking the way it rolls off the tongue while still conveying the mystery of a former Soviet state.  From that point on whenever I speculated about my country assignment, he always maintained that I was going to Moldova.  So I have a psychological – if not actual – familiarity with the country that leaves me not the least bit apprehensive about my departure.

Now I am faced with a daunting number of tasks to cross of my list: new passport, additional writing assignments, final health appointments, new wardrobe (I’m not living in sunny SoCal no more!) gathering personal effects, obtaining good luggage, granting Power of Attorney (doesn’t that sound official), transferring voting registration, etc. I can’t imagine being able to plan and pack effectively while trying to work full-time or complete finals for school – I am so lucky to have this time to focus.

Is today the day?

“I live now on borrowed time, waiting in the anteroom for the summons that will inevitably come.  And then – I go on to the next thing, whatever it is. Luckily, one doesn’t have to bother about that.”

– Agatha Christie

For some reason I think that today may be the day.  The red (?) blue (?) packet – it keeps changing color, according to different postings I read on the Peace Corps website –will arrive in my parents’ mailbox today.  A packet of paper has been wending its way through the post office process: in a huge plastic carton leaving the Washington DC office; in a truck; a plane; a semi; in a bin waiting for sorting; into a mail pouch slung over the deliverer’s shoulder; along the suburban streets; into the black mailbox posted at the end of a cul-de-sac on the opposite side of the continent from whence it started.  This packet contains the name of the country where I will be living for the next 27 months.  It describes the environment that will circumscribe me –the national language, the mean temperature, the presence or absence of electricity and/or indoor plumbing, the availability of housing, the cost of living, and the components of the local diet.  I will learn about the non-governmental organization to which I’ve been assigned – what city it is in, if there is any other PCV assigned there, what the mission and purpose of the organization might be, how long it’s been in existence.  It is an exercise in faith and hope to deliver your life into the unknown.  And it shows how far down the rabbit hole I had fallen that ambiguity is more attractive to me than the knowns of the past decade.

It’s in the anterooms of life that one makes the acquaintance of faith and hope.  And, if kept waiting long enough, one can take the opportunity to become their friends.  Strangely, athough I am anxious and excited to get the packet and learn the details of the next 27 months, I feel like I will be happy whatever the paper inside might say.  I have allies I didn’t have before.  I have the patience that being fifty brings.  I can face and thrive in whatever circumstance lies outside the anteroom door.

When we escape…

“When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego, and when we escape like squirrels turning in the cages of our personality and get into the forests again, we shall shiver with cold and fright but things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in, and passion will make our bodies taut with power, we shall stamp our feet with new power and old things will fall down, we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper.”   

―      D.H. Lawrence

I don’t know why, but this reminds me of the way I have felt for the last eighteen months, waiting.  Waiting. Waiting.  Waiting to escape the glass bottle of my ego, the wire fences of my relationships that keep me spinning in the same circles.  There are places in this world where I am not known, where I don’t know myself.  Because we do take our cues from our surroundings, our fellow actors, the lighting, the circumstances, the part for which we auditioned (so intentionally or accidentally) and got.  The forest is vast and foreign and filled with noises.  I am about to be a Stranger in a Strange Land and I shall laugh and the old things will fall down and the stalwart scaffolding of who I am will scatter like burnt curls of paper.

Wisdom for 50

We must become ignorant of all that we have been taught

And be instead bewildered.

Run from what is profitable and comfortable.

If you drink those liqueurs

You will spill the spring waters of your real life.

Forget safety.  Live where you fear to live.

Destroy your reputation, be notorious.

I have tried prudent planning for long enough.

From now on I live mad.

– Rumi