The weekend is already over, but this is only a little surprising. Friday was spent on the beach again, little hands darting back and forth across big paper with trails of color streaming behind. They are all becoming more confident and daring, and rather than needing to encourage them to experiment and try, now there comes the need to slow them down, pull them back, before they have mixed so many colors and spread them so many ways that the once slightly perceivable ocean and sand becomes one giant brown blob with traces of blue and half of a name in the corner. Already some of the students aren’t going to be back next week, and when they tell me I realize I will maybe not see these tiny people again and it was all over too soon, my heart breaks and then grows back together with smiles and hugs and intuitive knowing, trust, love.
I spend Friday night on the beach, a bonfire, lightning storm far off in the sky (don’t stand in the water) and I am occasionally alone in the wind and heat of the fire singing to it all. Shadows of people I barely know laugh, talk, quiet whispers crawling along the Gulf. There is a family with flashlights and little nets doing something or other in the water, blonde hair peeking out underneath the small hats on small heads while gentle hands guide them along. The people I speak to are friendly, when the fire is out I ride in the back of a truck –“You're in Mississippi now!”- and grin, grin, grin out at the road that flows out underneath and behind me. These are other workers I’m with, Americorps/Habitat for Humanity/Boys and Girls Club people, and we are fast friends; I think we all remind each other of other friends we have. The faces only rotate, the essence remains the same. I sleep on an immensely comfy couch that night after playing with kittens in a garage.
I am making a lot of art. Nothing to do in the house? Go sketch the same tree from the back porch again. Go for a bike ride and sketch the crossroads and the trees that line them. I come home and let the mosquitoes bite me as I use the last light to paint from the front steps, catching the tree next to Mount Zion turning black as the sun sets behind it. So I do a lot of trees. I can't help it, they're so brilliant here.
The people here are all patient and kind. There is no rush for the sake of rushing. I am growing so fond of the characters I have met here, and could not be more grateful for their warm smiles and hearty laughter that shows me that I really have yet to learn to laugh. Youme and I go out to lunch with Ella, James, and Lorenzo on Sunday, and everything about it feels like home. I understand more than ever that "Home is where the heart is".
It will be hard to leave.
Monica