I had a meeting over lunch with a friend last week, which left Stephen to run out for some rice & curry for himself. As he was paying to leave, the chef & mother chatted hurriedly to her daughter, who then turned to translate, “Where is your…other?”
Stephen assured them I was fine and just had to work that day. It’s nice to live in a town where everybody knows…
Your regular order.
That you come as a couple.
Perhaps names are overrated, after all.
Our life is full of languages. The good news: this means it can make a mess of all of us equally. We’re never alone.
One of our bread ladies has faithfully been coming to English each week. She does about 45 minutes of Rosetta Stone, and then we practice together for ten to fifteen minutes: whatever I can get out of her before she looks like she might give up. Right now we are working on:
This is my daughter. This is my son. This is my husband.
My name is Nyein Nyein. I am twenty-six years old.
My favorite is “This is my husband.” Somewhere, quite awhile ago, she learned husband = Stephen. She can’t help it now; her brain has learned it wrong. Every time I ask, Who is this?
This is my Steph…husband.
Every time. She always catches it before the last syllable, but it’s still pretty obvious. And pretty funny.
_________
Aye Aye Naing is nearing two and half, and she’s all toddler. She really loves Stephen and isn’t a huge fan of me. As in, Do you love uncle? YES. Do you love auntie? NO. Side glare included.
The challenge is, she has our names switched. She’ll come to the door and see me, give me the glare:
Kelli?
Hi! How are you?
NO. KELLI.
Yes, do you need something? Do you want to play? Do you want water?
NOOOOOOO! KELLI!!!
Do you want Uncle Stephen?
Yes.
{Right. One moment please, madame.}
_________
Win Moe is another little all-toddler toddler. One afternoon, as she pranced around with a lot of attitude, I said, “Wow, she is sassy! Do you know the word “sassy” in English?” (I said this in Burmese, except for the word “sassy” itself.)
To which her mother replied, “Oh, yes! I do know that word. Sexy, sexy. My daughter is very sexy!”
“No, no, no, NO. Those do sound similar but they are very, very different. Please NEVER say your three-year-old is sexy.”
_________
The Reinforcer, Pyint Soe, knows English. He still comes to study Rosetta Stone once a week and practice with me, which we hope will help with his graduation exam at the end of next year.
Sometimes I have him write a few sentences at home so he can practice new vocabulary and work on his grammar. He came last week using his new word, wedding, with this sentence, “Everyone will die wedding.”
I wasn’t really sure what to make of it. Usually I have a pretty good idea of what he’s getting at, even with errors. Of course he’s watching my facial expression and listening to my silence as I re-read it, scrabbling my brain to determine what he was going for. His face is falling, “Is it wrong?”
Well, I’m not sure. What do you mean?
Everyone will die wedding.
Yes…but, why? Can you tell me why?
Everyone die. Die (he says this in Burmese)–we call this “die,” right?
Yes. I understand “to die.” And “everyone.” But why “at a wedding”?
You said wedding is one day. So I think everyone dies.
Rewind to the previous week, when I was explaining the difference between a wedding and marriage: A wedding is one day, but the marriage is for the rest of their lives. So Stephen and I were married on November 1, that one day event or party; and then we are married for ten years now. So a wedding is one day and the marriage is the years following.
So wedding = one day. Everyone will die one day. And that, my friend, is true.
We started Family Dinner this month. Every Friday, we invite all of our “employees” and their families to join us for dinner and a class.
Family is a broad word. There are usually between fifteen and thirty of us. It could grow to forty if “everyone” comes; maybe fifty. Family is a broad word around here.
We explained the first week that we were doing this because it’s what we do as Americans, as Christians: we eat together. We talk and get to know one another better.
In Burmese culture, or at least in our neighborhood Burmese culture, it’s quite uncommon for every one to eat together or to talk much while they eat. So we bring “ice breaker” questions. Never mind that we already know the history of your family and marriage and when you hope to have your next child; let’s discuss:
– Would you rather be able to fly or be invisible?
Invisible, so I could steal things everywhere! 🤦🏼♀️
– If you could be any animal, what would you be?
A snake so I could kill people. 😳
A dragon. 🧐
A lion so I could get any food I want.
– Which snack are you most like, and why? (Then you get to keep the snack from the basket.)
I’m like these fish snacks because they are long and skinny.
I’m like this bag of chips because it’s fat.
I’m like this snack because my wife likes it and she likes me. 😍
And then we’re having a class together, where we learn together and try to get to know each other even more. The past weeks we’ve been talking about beliefs, core values, ethics, & morals.
We’ve talked about who feeds the kids in the house and why–what decides that? What do we want most in our kids and spouses: intelligence, beauty, wealth, independence, or kindness? Is it okay to hit animals? If we were stranded on a boat with only enough food for five people, how should we decide who lives?
Soon we’ll move on to goals, and what our plans are for this year and the next five. Later, we’ll discuss budgets and time management.
Each week, we have a teacher coming to lead the discussion and teach, so that we can participate like everyone else. She’s a Burmese Christian, so she’s helping us to connect our faith into why we do what we do: why we treat everyone equally, why we live here, why we’ve created jobs for each of them, why we spend our money the way we do, why we have the goals we have.
It’s brought some great, difficult, personal, messy conversations. But that seems to be the theme of the year, so we’re just settling in for the ride.
And even beyond the conversations, we pretty much love it.
It’s most of our closest friends, gathered around delicious food that Thida makes. It’s probably the best meal they’ll have all week, packed with meat and vegetables. I love hearing everyone laugh together, and learning more and more about some of the quieter husbands.
We have two of the teenagers provide childcare for the kids during our lesson, which gives them some spending money and keeps us all sane. I love hearing the kids laugh and call their auntie and uncle over, “When you finish, come plaaayyy!”
I love that we pray together, even if it’s the simplest prayer we can pray in Burmese. Last week, three-year-old Win Moe sat down and said, “Stephen, Kelli, let’s pray!” She said she was hungry.
Zu Zu has become a sweet friend. She works with an organization in town called Global Child Advocates, who runs Sojourn Studios, which now hires three women in our community to make beautiful ceramic jewelry.
Last year Zu Zu began to help with Sojourn Studios. About twice a week she comes to our house to check in on the jewelry and the ladies; to give them additional instruction. She helps lead a bible study over tea twice a month.
She is always smiling, frequently laughing, and often encouraging. #agoodfriendtohave
Last week, as we were in the car returning from a training we attended together, she told me this story:
“Before I met your husband, when I had never met him, I thought he was Ed Sheeran.
I went to the office, and he was there. He came to see Kris, and they were talking together.
I asked my friend Ivy, ‘Ivy! Ed Sheeran is here! Why did no one tell me Ed Sheeran is in Mae Sot? That he came to our office?’ And Ivy said that she didn’t think it was Ed Sheeran, but that it was just Kris’ friend.
But I still thought it was Ed Sheeran, so I went to another friend and another, to everyone in the office and asked them why Ed Sheeran was in town and why no one told me! They all said it was just Kris’ friend. But I thought he looked just like Ed Sheeran!
Then I started working for Sojourn and I came to your house. And he is your husband, Stephen!”
This is when the friend sitting next to her piped in, “Ed Sheeran I love so much!” Then they all started singing. Y’know, Ed Sheeran.
There are still children, everywhere, keeping us on our toes.
Toddler Schoolhouse is still fun and hilarious, each and every week. Thida teaches some Burmese and reads them a story; I teach them some English. We sing songs, and we eat together.
Kyaw Gee is doing absolutely amazing at guitar, particularly as an eleven-year-old! It was a rough start: very passionate in his playing, he broke a few strings and we thought he might break a few guitars by the end. And it was just loud.
But now he’s doing so well! Stephen’s working on teaching him a few songs he might be able to play at church, and he continues to take a lesson with Stephen every week.
Thida is still amazing. In this photo she’s reviewing the Christmas story with her granddaughter.
We have a new Flour & Flowers baby, and she and I spend most of our Fridays like this. 😍
I love paper. I like writing things down.
I like writing list after list, and then losing them or sticking them in pockets all over the place.
Last year at Christmas, I was gifted a beautiful paper planner. I wanted to write all the things in it.
But I also love my husband, and he really loves those online, syncing calendars that we can share. He can always read the handwriting. He always knows where to find it. He runs out of patience my list-writing and list-losing habits. (Which if you know his patience, is saying quite a lot.)
So, I turned this lovely planner into something of a record. I set a few goals and just started keeping track. I wanted to run, swim, and bike through the year. I wanted to read 52 books. I wanted to study Burmese, and I wanted to practice my violin again.
I bailed on violin.
I did study Burmese faithfully through the year. (Still.)
I read 54 books.
My favorite author of the year: Fredrick Backman. He’s followed by Jim Wallis, for what he believes and how he presents it so well; and Rainbow Rowell, for writing truly fun fiction.
My favorite autobiographies: Madeline Albright & Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Most terrifying read: Fascism: A Warning by Madeline Albright. Even more terrifying, actually, than Night, a memoir of the Holocaust by Elie Wiesel.
Most surprisingly genius: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. And all of Fredrick Backman’s work. Every single one is charming, even if you at first think its horrifying.
I ran 405 kilometers.
I swam 77 kilometers. (Most of those were in an 18-meter pool, so that’s about 4,277 laps!)
I bicycled 773 kilometers.
And thanks to Stephen’s great ideas to keep records of other things (on the computer, in organized charts and graphs), we know other things about 2018.
The Breakfast Club served 8,791 meals!
Flour & Flowers—just from January to September—baked 815 loaves of bread and rolled out 5,170 tortillas. They sold 248 pans of cinnamon rolls. At the end of the year, they each took home 5,000 baht (about $158) in savings, in addition to their weekly salaries.
For all my railing on paper and records, it’s pretty cool to see! I love seeing the books I read, remembering all I learned. It’s good to know that I could run across Arkansas on I-40 in a year if I needed to. It’s good to know that I could swim across Lake Balaton—in Hungary, in a year—if I needed to! I like seeing how all those crazy Fridays played became huge amounts of bread and savings accounts. I like seeing how all those 5:30am wake ups fed oh-so-many kiddos.
Here’s to 2019.
52 more books.
52 verses memorized with Stephen.
Hopefully 104 more runs, 156 more swims, and 52 more bike rides!
We are still learning Burmese.
STILL.
Language is an emotional rollercoaster. I want it so badly. I can’t seem to grasp it some days, and it can make me angry or defeated or heartbroken. Other days it can make me feel like I’m on top of the world and can conquer anything. My brain can make sense of that today, and it couldn’t before? BOOM. I’ve got this.
Every thing you learn new, you realize the hundred more you can’t quite yet say. You see the ten mistakes you made in three sentences while you were just trying to say something simple. Or you realize the tiny portion of the song on the radio you can actually grasp. But then you chat with a friend and time goes by, and you hardly notice.
It’s so natural. And then all of the sudden its just so impossible.
I’m the most disorganized learner when it comes to language. I don’t have a record of notes. I have notebooks here and there, often unfinished, sometimes with loose themes at the beginning. (The themes are always lost by the end.)
Stephen is the most organized, driven learner I’ve ever encountered. He has found system after system to break himself down, conquer every weakness, and tackle every challenge. He has the biggest file of notes, all sorted perfectly. He has apps, audio files, books. (I will note, I have all these things. I just couldn’t find them at this very moment. Or the next few.)
Last week, we started lessons with a new teacher. Our teacher of five or six years recently returned to Burma (but showed up in my dream last night!).
Honestly, our new class was pretty discouraging. I could try to explain why, but I’ll just say she was very unimpressed. I just left broken, wondering if I’m saying any of the things I mean to and if we’re accomplishing near what I thought we were. I was in tears and wanted to throw in the towel.
The next day we had a bible study over tea with the jewelry ladies, and I followed along. I felt like I knew what we were talking about, could comment and join. We shared stories and perspectives. At the end, two of the Burmese ladies said I really knew a lot and was doing very well.
Rollercoaster, you see?
Language is also a bit like a Magic Eye. Remember Magic Eye? Sometimes you look at it, and you see chaos: tiny little images, swirls. Nothing of significance. Overwhelming. Often frustrating.
But if you wait long enough, look hard enough, and give yourself a significant headache: you see something really beautiful.
(This is such a good analogy, I can’t even handle it. Wait, look, pounding headache; and there it is.)
But the cool thing about both language and Magic Eye is that you can also un-see it. (Not many things in life are like that; too many of us know.) I can step back from Burmese; I can choose to listen or not. I can choose to see swirls or statements.
And we’re still choosing every day, to study. Stephen still has his notes perfectly sorted, and I still have a few random pieces of paper on my desk of the new words Thida & my new teacher taught me this week.
Still.
Every year or two I have a favorite carol: a verse or a line; something that sticks out to me, tangibly enough to grasp and ache for.
This year, it’s one of the lesser-sung verses of Joy to the World.
No more let sin and sorrows grow
Nor thorns infest the ground
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found
Far as the curse is found
Far as, far as the curse is found
As we left for our camping trip on Christmas morning, we drove by Zwe in his new Christmas pajamas.
I find pajamas nearly every year for the youngest kids. There is a shop that has them—fuzzy, fleece pajamas, often in Christmas patterns, for about a $1 a pair. I can’t pass up that deal, particularly in the coldest months of the year when the littles need all the warm clothes they can for their bamboo homes.
Really, our neighbors don’t wear pajamas. Did you know pajamas are a thing of development? I didn’t, or at least I’m not sure I would have identified it that way until we moved here. Wearing them seems to be just another thing to wash by hand; another hassle and thus unnecessary. I’m not sure; I could be wrong. I do know that explaining pajamas to our neighbors for English class has been next to impossible. It isn’t a thing in their world.
The kids just wear them as an outfit. But I buy them anyway.
I think in my mind, it’s like a prayer for them: a hope that someday they’ll have Christmas pajamas. That someday, they’ll celebrate Christmas as a family, and they’ll live a life where they open up a new pair of pajamas on Christmas Eve.
In just one picture of our community, even a beautiful one like this, there is so much story for us. We know the stories these families hold, at least in the past eight years. We know when Zwe got here to Mae Sot, when he moved in with his grandparents and cousins. We remember picking him up across town with a small bag of things, an infant then.
All the families, all the stories: they all carry loss. Some more than others, but all of them carry the curse, the brokenness of sin and sorrows.
And yet, for this community in particular, we are hoping for His blessings to flow through. We are hoping for HIs goodness to stretch as far as the curse in found in every household, every family, and every story. We hope for Christmas to be celebrated, for families to be whole, and perhaps someday for there to be Christmas pajamas waiting under a tree.
Late after the Collective Christmas meal, I found a friend crying in the street. Her three-year-old daughter played next to her, and I sat down with them both to see what was wrong. I asked my friend, but she shook her head; then I asked the little girl, now in my lap, “Do you know why mommy is crying? What happened?”
“Daddy hit her. He drank a little too much and he hit her. Mommy doesn’t like that so she’s crying.”
It’s terrifying how much children understand.
I asked the mom if this was true and asked a bit more into the situation. Her mother-in-law had stepped in; he had left angry, and she was nervous for him to come back. I invited her in to sit in our house for awhile, or to sleep if she wanted; I asked if there was anything I could do. She said she wanted to just wait.
I told her we’d be up late that night—we had so, so many presents still to wrap—and that I’d leave the door open. I told her to come if he was angry or tried to hit her at all. I told her to run with her daughter, but if she couldn’t, to just come herself. I said I really didn’t think he’d hit his little girl—he really does love her and despite this story is a pretty great guy—and we could send Stephen to get the little girl if she got to our house safely. Then I prayed for her, and told her again to come if she was scared at all; the door would be open.
We checked on her house a few more times that night, and finally closed the door after midnight. We then opened it back at six the next morning—back at wrapping presents.
That morning, I passed her in the street as I returned from another house, and she grabbed my arm. She said thank you. She thanked us for leaving the door open, and said he came back calm. I reassured her she could always come, we’d always help, and that we could give her a key if this happened more. And she just said thank you.
I don’t think a mother has ever thanked us for situations like this, where we did this or more. Mostly, that is due to culture: the shame the situation creates, the losing face. I can’t say I ever expected it or even knew it wasn’t there. I wasn’t waiting for a thanks.
But she said thank you. And it meant the world to me this Christmas.
In addition to all the community traditions, we still managed to squeeze in a few of our own personal traditions!
We swim laps regularly at a local hotel where we have a membership to use their pool. This year, they built the biggest gingerbread house I think I’ve ever seen! I was super impressed at their detail, and just the monstrosity of it. So impressed, in fact, I told friends they should stop by and see it with their daughter. Stephen didn’t think it was quite amazing enough to recommend others to “visit,” but he did agree to take a selfie with me!
After delivering presents on Christmas Eve, we went home to make our traditional foods: Stephen’s family rolls, scalloped corn & stuffing, sweet potatoes, truffles, egg nog. (I cheated and served a rotisserie chicken from these store.)
We had a lovely meal {very} late on Christmas Eve–after passing out hundreds of presents, making all of our traditional foods, and packing for our annual Christmas camping trip!–and enjoyed sitting around the tree with a Christmas book.
Early Christmas morning we finished gathering things into the car and headed out to a new campground. It was absolutely beautiful, and a very relaxing way to spend Christmas and New Years.
We had friends join us in the middle for a couple days, which provided fun company and they captured some great photos. Thanks to Jason Harvel; all the spectacular photos are his
And now we’re back, ready for 2019!