Packing. Hindi film music playing on my laptop, the cat sitting in an open dresser drawer, stacks of books and clothes and other necessities (chocolate, a hot water bottle, my prayer book) on the bed and floor.
Last week I boxed up a half decade of life in New Haven--amazed and somewhat alarmed by the amount of stuff that can accumulate even in a small rented room--and moved it to my parents'. Books have been put away in the attic. My files and a few miscellaneous items made it into a bedroom closet. Today I'm tucking a wardrobe designed for modesty and warmth (long underwear, long tops, long shawls) into Gojira, my mom's Godzilla-sized suitcase that I'll be lugging to Kabul via Dubai and Frankfurt. Gestational wheels, measuring tapes, amnihooks, and bulb syringes destined for the maternity unit still wait to be packed up.
In spite of a life history involving many moves and suitcases, I've never quite gotten accustomed to the logistics of transition. Packing seems to demand an inordinate degree of emotional energy, to the point that I almost always require someone to sit with me for "moral support" to get the job done. Worse than packing is the saying of goodbyes. Never having become inured to the inevitability of parting, each goodbye conjures up the memory of every other goodbye, the painful tearing away from people and places I've loved.
When my home group prayed for me a couple weeks ago, one of our leaders blessed me with the words, "Pack you bags." He wasn't quite sure what it meant, and I'm not sure yet either. But maybe that was the moral support I needed to get me through, confirmation that I am supposed to move, to Afghanistan.
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