a totality of immersion

 

Rachel in Nepal 4

our granddaughter is in Nepal,

way on the other side of the Earth,

I hold a globe in my hands,

find where we are, find Nepal,

I check out where we'd end up 

straight down through the center of the Earth,

where we'd be south of the Equator in the Indian Ocean,

so I need to face north,

look straight down,

then elevate my gaze maybe 40 degrees.

I can then wave at her

and aim my love more truly

than just straight down,

we are blessed that Rachel is so vulnerably honest

and evocative in the writings she shares with us

and with a large contingent of her North American connections,

it is a portrait of an artist as a 20 year old woman,

a scientist, an adventurer,

a liver of life so fully

that she chose to spend four months

in a distant part of the world

blessed with traditions and culture

that have had thousands of years in the same place

to work to get it right, to keep it right,

recently they celebrated Dashain,

a Hindu holiday, celebrating a victory of good over evil,

with an abundance of four legumes:

crispy chickpeas, stewed black-eyed peas,

classic dahl, and dried spicy peas,

she has written of the practical realities

of chores that have to be done,

particularly with taking care of the cow

and harvesting the corn,

the challenge of maintaining family and home,

she writes of travel, hampered by the effects

of the slow to conclude monsoon,

of a wedding with her in yellow

and the other women in variations of red,

her host family got her the dress

to allow to "stand out,"

the Nepali word for "tall"

sounding like the word for "ugly,"

"aunties" meet her and comment on her height

which delights her sense of humor with how much

their positivity sounded like they were calling her ugly,

she both wants to stand out, and to fit in,

her facility with the language now improving enough

for her to reach for subtlety and depth and nuance,

and getting there,

she enjoys her teachers and learning from them,

including her host, her host's siblings, and the bus driver,

all she encounters as she works to learn and speak the language,

and thus then to learn their world,

now for the next week she has her father and cousin with her,

so that together they can explore on a trek

the physical complexity and wonder

of the mountains of a Himalayan country,

just to touch for a moment our granddaughter

and her embrace of the totality of her immersion

into this new, and very old, world,

moves me into the joy of free-flowing tears.

by Henry H. Walker

October 8, ‘25