I carry with me a life now, no awaiting child but a grown man, yet still a life all the same. A life I trust myself to but that trusts itself to me also. What a privilege and what a task, for every life can be torn and damaged, built and grown. There in my weakness I feel his nervousness, I resonate with his fears and they grow to fears of my own. How differently the world turns thousands of miles from here, how strange the normal and normal the strange. What pitfalls I see coming, and what delights await. What is hidden from view, will it break our steps delightfully or painfully I wonder.
I've spent some time reconnecting with faces lost over the past year, be that by e-mail or just conversations with faces that jolt my memory for names and fail yet again. A whole year has passed since the Serbian adventure started and so many thing have changed in this little revolving world of green and yellow and blue. There have been shifts in the winds, people have departed and arrived, old dreams have been shelved and new ones have given birth. Some people have found themselves with the record stuck on repeat and the original enthusiasm dims in their descriptions. Others have moved nearer to their goal and the distant seems imminent suddenly.
Clinging to the pieces of the signposts and maps we've used, the lost feeling can seep in through the unknown events that have shaped these once so close acquaintances. But rather than dwell on the passing of defining moment it's like finding a friend afresh. With all the excitement of stories we can share, of new loves and new places and people we have carried and been carried by. Trusts built and the fears that history has faded. As our stories entwine again we form that cobweb of understanding, the net that can hold the weight of disappointment, failure, and loss. The network through which joy can light smiles and spontaneous dancing and weep for those with not enough tears. We prepare ourselves to weave again our bonds knowing even as we do so our threads will eventually move apart and their strength will one day be week again. Until then we carry the responsibility and privilege to journey together, to paint the world in complementary shades, and to leave a trace of who and what we owe ourselves to behind.