Like Water

I want this year to feel like wild like water. I want this year to glide and drift, rush and whirl. I want it to stream where it will. I won’t dig ditches or put up dikes. I won’t plan or scheme, build rigid timelines or structures. Water will tumble and gurgle, moving always, even when still.

There is too much that we don’t know about this year. Will we stay here in Jakarta? Will we move? Will we stay in our tiny, lonely apartment? Will we manage to orchestrate a move out into the community? Will our family grow? Where will my business take me? Where will my husband’s job take him? Will we homeschool? Change schools? Unschool? What joys will envelop us? Which heartaches will causes us to keel and pitch? We don’t know. We can’t know.

Ten years ago, we swore that we were coming to Asia for a maximum of five years. If I had plotted out our life, built a damn, blocked off that time, where would we be now? If I were mapping it all out, could I have ever, ever dreamt two children each born in a different land? I couldn’t have imagined a mess of red curls, a boy with hair like a coconut tree. I couldn’t have choreographed a life where I create and make things. I couldn’t have plotted this out.

I used to want to know what would happen. It was that I wanted to plan where we would be, when we could return to our homes and visit our people, I wanted a blueprint, plans. I wanted to dig ditches and reinforce canals so that water wouldn’t deviate from the map.

But had I planed and schemed, Iwouldn’t be here in this place now, with these adventures behind me, and those up ahead. 

Who knows down which stream this year will flow? Through which river, into which lake? Which vessels will it fill, which banks will burst, which will hold? It’s not to me to know. I want it to flow, and I will go where it goes. 

Images with kodak ektar 100 + canon eos 1