Tag: Life

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Fragile Places

Some places seem to be much more fragile than others. This summer, I had the opportunity to go and help out at a Bible camp just for a couple of weeks, to help as a cabin leader. At the start of the week, kids would pile into the camp with their parents, some nervous, some excited to get to know each other and enjoy the games and many excitements of camp. And for the whole week, I would find myself extremely busy and happy spending time with the nine twelve-year-olds in my cabin, counsellors, and all the other kids running around the camp as well. Doing devotions, praying together, eating together and playing games together, we soon got to know each other very well, and before long we felt like a little family – the nine boys, myself and my junior counsellor.

However, before long, the week came to a close. The kids packed up and got ready to home. Dirty clothes and numerous little injuries told the story of all the fun they had. The night before the boys had to leave, some talked about how they wanted to come back next year and do the same thing – that we should all come back next year and be together again. I was happy to hear that they enjoyed it, and to hear them long for a ‘repeat’ in a way, but I knew the truth – that this week could never be repeated again. Camp is a fragile place. It lasts for a week, and in that week there’s an amazing mix of kids and counsellors, which makes the whole time so worthwhile. But this mix of kids and counsellors and experiences can’t last forever, and it can never happen again. It just won’t. Never again will all the same kids be together, with all the same counsellors and be able to enjoy being together all over again. That’s life.

MCS, my old boarding school, is a fragile place. I can remember in my final year of high school, lying in bed, thinking about the changes that would take place when graduation day came. Never again could I walk through these halls I knew to find the same friends in the same rooms. Never again would I take my toothbrush at bedtime and seek out the company of the guys in my class while I brushed – to sit on their beds and try to talk through the toothpaste to them. We would all be replaced. Soon these rooms would be someone else’s, or they would be left empty – as they have been. Some of us might come back and visit and, by chance, may even be together at the same time, and be able to re-live some shadow of our experiences in high school, but it would never be the same.

Some places are solid. Like a tree or house – even the school building we spent so many years in, these places stay more or less the same. Of course, there are always changes. Trees grow bigger, houses change – but they are still there, they continue on. You can climb a tree you climbed in your youth and sit on the same branch, and look out to the same view and, for the most part, it can be the same.

Camp and boarding school are like grenades. All the fragments and particles share space and memories together for moment in time, but when their time is up, the pin is pulled and all the pieces explode across the world – blown into a million tiny shards. Exciting. Painful. Never again can they be put back together. Never again can they be the same.

However, this doesn’t make the fragile places less precious. I really hope my feelings are never mistaken for bitterness or anger, because it’s not like that at all. These places are still so valuable, and the experiences and memories don’t lose their meaning because of the violent separation involved. But I know that some places and experiences will never be the same. One might gather a few fragments to piece together something that looks similar, and bears some semblance of the original object, but still, everything has changed.
These are the fragile places.

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My Blue Trunk of Memories

I opened up my blue trunk today. My trunk that holds the things that mean a lot to me. I always find it to be such a strange and exciting moment. I go into it thinking that there are probably things I can get rid of now, seeing as I have changed over time, and yet I always surprise myself. It’s like discovering treasure. Some of the things I can hardly even remember until I’ve seen the little things hidden inside. I open up an old candy tin to reveal little trinkets I’ve collected over the years. I have a couple flag pins, from both Canada and Pakistan. There’s a squished penny from the dinosaur museum in Drumheller, which I can still remember begging my dad to let me buy. There’s a ‘dog-tag’ my senior class made when we graduated, a shield necklace with a verse on it, and an old plastic patakha dart that looks like it’s been through a lot of life. I look at each of them with a fresh wonder, and slowly put them each back into the tin. Everything is important, every little piece of memory.

Below the tin is a box of coins from all over the world – Middle Eastern, Oriental, South American and European. Some are sorted into plastic sheets by country, while others are in bags and little containers. Still others lie loose in the box. I suppose I couldn’t be bothered to put them into any kind of container at the time. The coins still intrigue me, and I find a few lying around I have collected recently and throw them in too, before closing the box.

In the trunk are my high school banners, an old shawl, an afghan scarf, a knife from nepal, a painted teapot, a couple picture albums and some other odd treasures. Inside a folder are old stories I wrote when I was younger, or pieces of them. There’s a little book I printed with my brother too. They make me smile as I see the little boy with a big imagination and huge hopes for these ideas. Now they sit in my blue trunk.

Below all these is a folder of papers. Page after page of old report cards, boarding reports and school awards. And as I skim through the pages, I can’t help but smile. Not only is it like walking through the life of a little boy growing up, but it’s as if I’m walking through the life of my parents, watching this little boy grow older in time. One report says of my little kindergarten self, “He understands basic concepts of size and shape, sorting, counting number recognition and measurement.” Another reads “Josh is ready for grade one work, which he should cope with easily.” I’m glad I made it into grade one. I feel that would have been a problem otherwise. Some of the comments are just downright hilarious. My P. E. teacher from my public school in Pakistan wrote “during P. T. display, the movement of your body was flexible.” Glad to hear it.

As I read through these forms I can’t help but think about my parents, and what they thought of this little boy, who was “quiet” but “enthusiastic”. I can’t even remember those days, or my thoughts and memories at the time. I smile as I see myself growing through the years. Thankfully I always did fairly well in school, so my reports are generally encouraging, but not all of them. There are the few that tell of the times when I was not very pleasant to have. One from junior high reads “Josh has shown little interest in being a part of junior high boarding life. He also has not happily joined in the organized weekend events.” I can remember those times. I can remember my attitude, and I can remember the people around me who were disappointed. But most of all, I can remember and imagine what it would have been like for my parents to read this about me. It makes me embarrassed even now. Thankfully it was a passing theme, and I soon grew to have a better attitude in school and boarding life, and to be the happy, hardworking boy that I once was.

All through these pages, time and time again, I see my parents love for me. Even the fact that they cherished all these reports, right down to my little kindergarten self, and filed them away for me to have later in life. I can’t get over how special my parents are, and how much they cared about me all through my years growing up and now today as well. They loved me through good and bad, and always pressed me to do better and to be better – not just at school, but in life and in my character. I can remember the talks we had when I wasn’t doing well and I had let them down, and I can remember their joy when I may them proud and did my best. But most of all, I can always remember the love.

Opening up my trunk is always a very introspective journey back into memories. Surrounded by these pieces of myself, and of my past, I seem to forget the present altogether. And it’s not until I happened to glance into a mirror and saw the bearded face of a twenty-year-old staring back at me, that I realized a lot of life has gone by, and that I’m not that little boy I’m reading about in the pages. And yet, I am somehow, because as I read through the pages, and hold that old white patakha dart, I almost feel as though I was eight again, putting these things in my old candy tin for the first time, because I loved them and I wanted to cherish them.

Mummy and Daddy, I just want you to know, once more, that I love you so much, and I’m so thankful for all the love that you have given me over the years.

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Prairie Rainstorms

Lately I seem to go for bike rides at the strangest times. I find with the long summer days, when daylight lasts until 10:30 at night, my perception of the day is often different than it would be normally. Instead I find myself setting out on a bike ride at 10 pm, thinking to enjoy a quick half hour of sunlight with some twilight as well. But, what would have appalled my grandparents more than the lateness of my trip would probably be the fact that I left the house in a black t-shirt and shorts with no helmet as well. It struck me as funny that I had just happened to be wearing all black when I left, but being too lazy to go back and change, I set out all the same.

As I left, dark thunderclouds loomed over the West side of town, bursting with brilliant flashes of lighting. I could feel the winds picking up, blowing the cool night air past me, as the smell of oncoming rain filled the air. It reminded me of Murree and the nights when I would lie awake watching the clouds pour over the hilltops as they boomed and crashed, shaking the windows in their frames. This night, as I rode, gazing at the sky beside me I just wanted the sky to break loose. “Give me a real good storm”, I prayed, as I caught myself again spending too much time looking at the sky and not enough looking at the path below me that was getting darker by the minute.

Our town was wrapping up the week of its annual Westerner Days fair, and as I rode past the park where the events had been held for the day, I was met by all kinds of people walking back to the cars, or getting on buses, hurrying to beat the darkness and the oncoming rain. Then, turning back toward town I coasted through quiet neighborhoods and shut up houses, as the sky threw a bluish-purple light over the streets with its streaks of lightning. Only as I started to turn home did the drops of rain begin to fall, slow and scattered at first, but building in time. Thankfully I wasn’t far from home, as very quickly the rain grew harder and harder, though still sparse. In fact, I had reached my neighborhood with little more than a drop on myself, though I could hear them landing all around me on the road and roofs of the houses. Then, just before my street I had the pleasure of having a marble size drop of hail hit me right on my head, stinging like a rock. I made it the rest of the way, holding one hand over head and eyes as I pulled into the driveway, moments before the clouds burst.

By the time I had gotten inside after leaving my bike in the garage, rain was showering down from above. I kept all the house lights off. I could see the sky better that way, and I watched as huge trees nearby bent over in the wind. Occasional lightning would light up the whole backyard to reveal the thousands of drops that filled the sky and the grass that that glistened in the dark.

A prairie storm isn’t quite the same as a monsoon storm in Pakistan, but I felt that night that God made sure it got pretty close – close enough enough for me. And that evening I lay in my bed and listened the the rain continue to drench the earth below, and fell asleep happy.

hail

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An Evening in Karachi

Thinking back on the past few weeks and my time in Pakistan, I hardly know how to relate the mix of emotions that seem to wrestle around in my heart. I can clearly remember the drive to the airport on my last day, squeezed into a small white taxi with my brother, watching the Murree hills fade away from me. Lush trees were soon replaced by sparser shrubs, the cool mountain air grew hot, and my shirt began to stick to back. I watched as I was taken away, feeling like a banished criminal, being led from the place I wanted to stay. I know that it was me who decided when to leave, and when my flight would be, but somehow it felt forced, like a sentence carried out routinely. Like visiting hours were over.

As I sat on the plane, surrounded by Pakistanis, I remembered the joy I felt when I had taken this same flight coming to Pakistan, and the anticipation with which I watched out the windows to see the small houses with flat roofs and little Japanese vehicles that dotted the airport tarmac. Now I thought of the airports in Canada, where clean Fords drove around, pulling the long baggage trains toward the plane, and not a plastic bag was to be found on the grass around the runway. Something about Canada always seems to be a little too clean – antiseptic maybe.

I had a pleasant surprise the evening of my flight as my brother and I landed in Karachi, and rode a shuttle to the nearby airport hotel. Thinking we were heading straight out of the country, I had forgotten that we would be spending the night here, and that my time in Pakistan was not quite over yet. Instead, I gazed out the window at the silhouettes of trees and buildings as the air of a Karachi night blew warm in my face – enjoying Pakistan for a short while longer. I hadn’t even planned to be down in the Sindh, and then, unexpectedly there, I felt I couldn’t have left without being there first. I felt as though, in some ways, I hadn’t truly been to Pakistan without being in Karachi, with its lights, its memories, and bustle of activity.

Our hotel seemed like an oasis. It was surprisingly enjoyable, ignoring the not-so-clean looking sheets, and the cockroaches that skittered across the floor (thankfully they were only small ones – much better than the huge ones we sometimes found in our bathroom in the Sindh. The ones that would take a few good smacks to kill, and that would then wiggle their massive legs feverishly until you had washed them down into the toilet in the ground).

Once at the hotel, my brother and I made our way to the restaurant for a buffet of various Pakistani food. It was evident that I would be given ample opportunities to enjoy the little things of Pakistan for just one more night, and I made the most of it, with rice, vegetables, chicken and roti. After the meal, my brother and I, tired as we were, made our way around the compound, following the signs to tour the games room, the work-out room, and even a swimming pool, which was closed for the night. We managed to pull ourselves up high enough up to wall to peer over at the still water in the pool. I texted my Mum that evening and told her we had decided not to go to Canada quite yet, and that instead we would enjoy the hotel for a few more days, and give ourselves time to enjoy the pool and the other facilities. If only it had been true.

After our explorations of the hotel were complete, my brother and I returned to the room for cool showers. The water was soothing, as I let the cold water rinse off the sweat that stuck to my clothes. I lay damp in my bed, staring up at the roof, listening to the sound of the water as my brother showered. Again, questions and emotions poured into my head. This time I closed my eyes, and prayed aloud instead – going before the one Person that I knew would stay with me, that has a plan for me, and that will give a purpose to each morning and fresh joy to fulfill it as well.

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Fix Ourselves

Books tell us a lot about ourselves. When I go home to visit my grandparents about an hour from my college, I often go and help out at a second hand store where my Grandmother volunteers. If I’m not needed hauling a heavy box or bag, then I’m with the books, sorting through piles of titles that come in from everywhere. In some ways, it’s like sorting through boxes of treasure, only a large majority seem dull, dusty and all too uninteresting for me to ever spend time flipping through their pages. But even those that are boring often have a story to tell. What’s most interesting about sorting through these books is the way they reflect people, time periods and mindsets.

I’m not always quite sure what to do when I come across a book about how the evil communists in Russia are the antichrist, planning to take over Israel. Or when I find an action-romance novel splayed with a large picture of a Nazi plane engulfed in flames, headed downward to its destruction, while a couple embrace in the foreground. I wonder what kind of stories we will begin to tell ourselves over the years. Will pictures of dying Taliban or exploding North Korean warheads make up the background of our books, while a man and woman gaze into each other’s eyes in the forefront, reminding us that sappy emotional romance is really where our priorities lie?

Books tell us about ourselves. As I place books out on the shelves at the store, I’m surprised at the amount of books there are offering help for the many issues in our lives. Ten steps to a healthy marriage. How to find financial satisfaction. How to reign in your insane children. How to live without stress. How to live without worry. A hundred ways to simplify your life. A thousand ways to spend your money on books that will try to tell you how to fix your family, marriage, business and life. We try to fix ourselves.

The very fact that we have so many books on how to do all these things should perhaps indicate that most people are still looking. Just like the existence of doctors tells us that humans have problems. We see the brokenness of society in the simple laws of supply and demand. We look high and low for something that will finally satisfy, heal and direct. And we look everywhere but up. The true answer to all our confusion and our searching can be found in one Person. But too often we just don’t want to find it.