Tag: Pakistan

Eulogy for Pauline Alice Brown

Published on by Marilyn10 Comments

Friends – 9 days following my last post, my mom died. I had the honor of delivering her eulogy. Here is what I said:

It was my profound honor to be at the side of my mom, the woman who birthed me, as she took her last breath and ended her journey in this world.

It is now a profound, albeit daunting, honor to give this eulogy in the presence of so many people who knew her and loved her. It feels especially important to thank my brother Tom and sister-in-law Terry who cared for her and my dad so well, giving them a home during their last season of life. You gave her a home that teemed with life, with family, with grandchildren, with Allison and Paul and Margot, more recently with Tami. Moreover, you provided a gathering place for our scattered family. We are so grateful.

95 years is a lot of years. Last spring, I said to mom “Think about it Mom! We throw away toasters after 15 years, refrigerators after 25, you’re 95!! You’re amazing – so much better than a toaster!” My mom wasn’t impressed.

When I think about the span of my mom’s life, two pictures come to mind. 

The first one is the only picture we have of when she was a baby, probably around a year old. The photo is black and white, and the baby is looking straight at the camera, short brown curls framing a round face with sparkling eyes and a big smile. The second picture is a picture of my mom on the day before she died. She looks tiny in a hospital bed at Advent House. My brothers and I surround her as she gives us orders so that she doesn’t look too awful for the picture. Little binds those two pictures together – except the eyes. The sparkling eyes are the same.

So many stories, so many years, and so many photographs stand between those two pictures. Truth is, none of us knew the Polly of the early stories. For Baby Polly, firstborn to Stanley and Cyrena Ruth Kolodinski became a little girl with a fierce drive that set the course of her life. Those early years are best characterized by  “I’ll show you!” That was the Polly who was in junior high school and talked about going to college. “Hmph!” said her Polish father. “What does a girl need with college?”

Polly didn’t talk back. She just determined in her heart that she would show her father. On her graduation from Gordon college, he was the proudest man in the room.

It was during this period of her life when she heard a large man with a strong Swedish accent speak about missionary work in the country of India. Her heart responded and she made up her mind right then that she would be a missionary. She didn’t have a clue what all that meant, but the fierce determination embedded in her response was real.

The little girl Polly became a young woman who walked back from the Fenway area of Boston one summer night, starry-eyed from her first kiss with Ralphie, the brown-haired, blue-eyed college student who had captured her heart. When her girlfriends excitedly asked if he had held her hand, she looked at them and said “Hmmhmm” – clearly she was not one to kiss and tell. We know the end of that story.

A few years later, she stood on the deck of a ship, looking young and sophisticated, wearing white gloves, a fashionable hat, and pearls around her neck. No one would guess looking at her that she was headed to the country of Pakistan, a place she had never been, to serve a God she had begun to love as a little girl.  Polly was on her way to bear witness to the incarnational love of Jesus.

She writes of leaving the shores of New York in her first book Jars of Clay: (Read page 7 paragraph one)

And so they did.

Pakistan became home and ten thousand stories were lived that included five kids, many different homes, studying and speaking two languages, learning to love well, entering the courtyards and lives of Muslim friends and neighbors, finding an extended family of fellow missionaries and Pakistani Christians that went far beyond borders, and walking with God when there was light and during the dark tragedies of life.

The thread woven through the story is the thread of faith, and no matter at what stage or story you met Polly, you would soon learn of that thread. You would learn of a faith that took her to Pakistan and back, a faith that sustained her during deeply lonely times in Pakistan, where family and familiarity were an ocean away. A faith that saw her through every age and stage of her life. A faith that continually led her to repentance and grace. And a faith that was challenged in these past couple years and months.

If you met my mom in more recent years, you knew her in the winter of her life. You met her during a time when she could no longer serve others in the way she longed for. Instead, she had to call on others to help her. For in recent years, she struggled. She struggled with feeling invisible. She struggled with the feeling she had outlived her usefulness. She struggled to trust God with a body that was no longer serving her well. And she had an increasing ache of homesickness for her forever home. The thread of faith I think sometimes felt thin to her, like it might not hold the weight of aging. Roles were reversed as instead of her encouraging us to stay strong in the faith, it was us encouraging her. Her faith was buoyed through visits for yummy desserts at Phillips European with her dear friend Peggy. It was buoyed through times with her dear JoMarcia, her nurse but so much more. It was buoyed by the family and faith family that loved her.

At 9:40 pm on Sunday, November 5th, she ended her journey.

And today we say a public and formal goodbye to Pauline Alice Brown – wife, mother of five, mother-in-law, grandmother of seventeen, matriarch to a multitude and counting of great grandchildren, friend and mentor to many, storyteller and writer, sustained by and through faith.

My mom once said that she was sorry that she and my dad were not leaving her kids anything, nothing “of value”. I looked at her in astonishment. “Not leaving us anything? Are you kidding? You’ve given us everything we need and more.”

On her bedside stand was the true evidence of what Mom left us for it was there that I found index cards with the names of every family member, prayers that she daily prayed for us. I found a prayer list two pages long with names of so many of you who are in this room. My mom’s legacy is here in this room and beyond. Her obedience, love, and honor of God extend through the generations.

So, tell them – tell them the stories of Polly and her God.  Tell them the stories of family and faith, of who God is and what he has done, for the God who held her stories for all those years, holds all of ours.

Pakistan Independence Day

Published on by MarilynLeave a comment

Happy Birthday Pakistan! In honor of Pakistan’s 76th Birthday. Founded in 1947, Pakistan has a colorful, well-storied history. It is also a country deeply misunderstood on the world stage. In honor of the country that raised me, I’ve included an excerpt from my second book. Enjoy!

“I learned early on of the beauty and hospitality of Pakistan. My eyes captured landscapes that the best photographers in the world could not capture, and the music and colors are etched on my mind. I was welcomed into homes and churches, played in courtyards and on canal banks.

In my childhood, the Pakistan I knew was a place of color and life: bright oranges, reds, yellows, and greens of spices and fabrics. I knew the ready invitations to come for tea that brought smiles to my face and delight to my heart. I knew the best food in the world – mouthwatering and piping hot pakoras; kebabs purchased in the middle of the bazaar in the afternoon; spicy, red-orange, charred chicken tikka with naan and fresh lemon; the cold tang of lemon squash; and chicken masala’s thick, onion-filled sauce that made my nose run through an entire meal. The tastes and spices lingered long after the meal was over.

I knew Pakistan as a place of food, music, colors, and laughter. This was my home, the setting of my earliest memories, my first steps, my first kiss, my first love. I literally cut my first teeth in this land. Pakistan was a place of life and faith. I was surrounded by Pakistanis who loved me and put up with the immaturity of my childhood. This was where my physical and faith journey began. Would I ever love another place so much? I didn’t think so. Later, I would come to know the complexity and contradiction that defined this homeland that had adopted me, but in early years I knew only the good.

I would later discover more of her history. I would learn of a Pakistan birthed in violence and tragedy, a land that continues to face crisis after crisis – some at the hands of other governments, and some of its own making. I would learn of the difficulty of a country that struggled to find her identity apart from the larger Indian subcontinent. I would see the struggles in my friends around marriage and family and learn of the massive disparities between the wealthy and the poor.

Later I would learn that in addition to the beauty of friendship and hospitality there was also the horror of violent fundamentalism. I would be introduced to and angered by the one-dimensional Pakistan of Western perception and media. I would understand that alongside stunning landscapes of high mountains and clear lakes was the dirt and raw sewage of cities. I would later face disease, high infant morbidity and mortality, inescapable poverty, and the light hair and big bellies of malnutrition. I would grow to see many dimensions of this beautiful, complex land. But the Pakistan of early childhood was a beautiful home, and I loved that home.”

Excerpt from Worlds Apart- A Third Culture Kid’s Journey. Available wherever books are sold.

Friendship Forged of Steel – In Memory of Jean Buker

Published on by Marilyn7 Comments

At nine pm on October 11, 1954, as tugboats slowly pull a freighter away from the docks in Brooklyn, seven passengers stand together on the deck, watching the lights of the city and the Statue of Liberty fade into the distance. Four more are sleeping peacefully below deck in their bunks and portable cribs, blissfully unaware of how the events of this day are shaping their lives. On the dock where our family members and friends had waved their last goodbyes, a lone man walks to the end. His voice echoes across the harbor waters, over the noise of tugboats as they move the Steel Recorder out towards the open Atlantic: “Grace and peace…Pray without ceasing…Preach the Word.”

Pauline Brown in Jars of Clay

My mom called me yesterday and left a voice message. It was about a dear friend of hers from Pakistan days who was dying.
“It’s not that I’m sad for her,” she said through tears. “It’s that I’m sad. Just so, so sad.”

Mom’s friendship with Jean Buker goes back to early days when the two young families were embarking on a journey that would affect them and their children in unquantifiable ways. Their first forays into friendship began at Hartford Seminary where the two couples, along with a few others from my parents’ mission were enrolled for missiology classes. Those early days of dreaming and planning for their life overseas propelled them forward onto the Steel Recorder – a freight ship that left out of New York Harbor.

I picture my mom and Jean, both in their mid-twenties, beautiful with not a wrinkle on their skin, dressed as one did in that era – in skirt suits with hats and perhaps a strand of pearls at the neck. Jean and Ray Buker had three children while my parents had my oldest brother. The journey by sea to this newly formed country was four weeks long. Four weeks of walking the deck to get exercise, keeping tight rein on their toddlers so they didn’t fall through the huge gaps on the railing of the ships deck, trying to make it through seasickness and the beginnings of homesickness, playing scrabble with a competitive edge in the evenings, singing and praying to a God they loved, then at last seeing the shores of Karachi Harbor in what was then West Pakistan.

How young and naive they all were! And yet – how very brave! They watched as their family members became little dots on the shore, finally looking at each other knowing this was it. There was no going back.

Then those first months in the Sindh region of Pakistan, three couples and six children sharing a two-bedroom house in a questionable area of the city of Larkana because no one else would rent to these foreigners.

Those early days built a solid foundation of friendship. Friendship forged in shared language learning, learning how to cook with unfamiliar ingredients, and all that comes with a cross-cultural move to the other side of the world.

The friendship continued through the years, made stronger as more people joined them. Websters, Roubs, Addletons, Pittmans, Johnsons, Dobras, Salmons, Elkins….names that I don’t think I could ever forget, so much were they a part of our family’s srory.

The Bukers moved back to the United States at one point, Jean’s husband Ray taking a job at the mission. And though the proximity of their friendship changed, every time my parents were in the U.S. they visited the Bukers. Updating each other on life in Pakistan, their kids, what was going on in the mission and sharing joys and discouragements continued to be a part of their friendship.

Jean Buker didn’t stop with my parents. She was Aunt Jean to us, more a relative than any blood could possibly create. Her friendship and love continued on to us kids as she extended her table to feed us too much at every Thanksgiving so we knew there was always a place where the turkey and pumpkin pie would be offered up with friendship and understanding. She provided a home base where we and other members of our family and TCK tribe could stay. Aunt Jean was the one who hosted a graduation party when I graduated as a proud nurse. Aunt Jean was the one who gathered people from all over the Chicago area to shower me with gifts a week before my wedding.

I knew where my mom’s tears were coming from as she cried over the phone. They were coming from a place of sweet saudade, that wistful longing for what no longer exists, no matter how much you mourn or long for it. They were coming from a place of memory, where young hearts and bodies with the world at their fingertips go out to the unknown, and friendship is a necessary ingredient. They were coming from knowing that earthly loss smacks of pain and grief because our hearts are created for eternity.

They were coming from a place of a beautiful, God-ordained, orchestrated, and formed friendship and they reflected the heart of God.

“The shifts of time unearth our longing for a permanent residence, unshakeable, immovable, wholly given and wholly ours. Scattered across this great globe, now and then, we stumble across gifts of happiness from a God who, kindly, with an absolute patience that the trees themselves were taught to imitate, guides us up into the security of his own life”

Laura Fabrycky

This post is dedicated to Pauline Brown, Bettie Addleton, and Grace Pittman – the remaining originals from CBFMS.

On Quiet Belonging

Published on by Marilyn2 Comments

I’ve been quiet in this space. In the past few years, February has been a time of quiet reflection and muted colors. It is equal parts winter, past tragedies, and me. I don’t hate it and I don’t try and push it away. Instead, I probably bake way too much (cinnamon rolls anyone?), find myself frequenting coffee shops even more regularly, and do a lot of reading and journaling.

As I write this, I have escaped the city to Rockport’s beauty and quiet. It was the anniversary of my brother’s death and I needed time for reflection and some mourning. This morning I literally chased the sunrise, knowing that it had to be just around the next corner, finally happening on its magnificent break over the horizon, flames of color spreading across the sky. It was deeply satisfying!

Into this quiet, my dear childhood, now adult friend Mikaere Greenslade posted a beauty of a poem online, specifically tagging me. The poem was titled ‘belong’ and I’m quite sure he has little idea of how much it meant to me.

Mikaere is a beautiful poet who lives in New Zealand. I found out recently from my mum that she considered Mikaere’s mum to be one of her closest friends. We lived in the same city from around 6 years old to 10 years old or so. Then, as is the case of so many global friendships, we parted, each to our respective passport lands. I was to return to Pakistan after a year, but Mikaere did not. Before the advent of social media and the finding of these long-lost friends I never imagined that we would reconnect. But reconnect we did over a shared love of Pakistan and writing.

On this quiet February, where introspection is not an enemy but a dear friend, I offer you his words. Enjoy! 

'belong'

(for Marilyn)

where is home she asked
four walls or
being known
where do the birds call
your name
where does rain caress
the stones that cover your
bones
where a sigh and smile
can hold hands
and the dog sleeps late
nau mai haere mai
haere mai ki tou kainga
whisper the trees

Mikaere Greenslade 2023

To purchase this beautiful book, contact Mikaere through Celestial Press by clicking here. Here is a recent poem he shared on his page. Do think seriously about supporting him for where would we be without our artists, our poets, our writers, our dancers? 

night prayer 

it whelms from deep
bones and memory
not a story but
a know
what you know
dark turns and wait
after the cold comes stand
after the joy come scars 
hold breath
it is all precious 
and you child
and you

Arguments about Origin – a TCK post

Published on by Marilyn5 Comments

I was exhausted. It was yet another argument about where I was from, arguments that I was beginning to call “Arguments of Origin” – perhaps so that they sounded more academic and less fraught with emotion.

But the reality was, they were fraught with emotion.

This particular argument started out as a benign comment by a friend to something I had posted online. I don’t even remember the original post, but it was about belonging and my connection to my childhood home – Pakistan. In the post I called Pakistan “home.”

“But it’s not really home for you.” she stated matter-of-factly.

“I’m not sure what you mean.” I said “I grew up there, so yes, it was my childhood home.”

“But you’re not from there.” she was not going to let this go.

Fair enough, but it really depends on what “from there” means.

I tried to put a different lens onto the conversation. “Well – where do you say you are from.” “That’s easy” she named a small town in one of the New England states. “Okay, why do you call that town home?” “Well, I grew up there.”

The defense rests their case.

When I returned to Pakistan in 2010, I got to walk through the house we had lived in during my junior and senior years of high school. A tsunami of memories came over me as I walked through the large front rooms, around the verandah, and finally stopped in front of my bedroom door. As I pressed my face against the window, looking into the room where I had spent winter vacations, I gasped. There on the bed was the comforter that my mom and I had picked out so many years before. The previously bright green, pink, yellow, and blue patterns had faded through the years, but there was no mistaking it. I never thought something as simple as a comforter could bring on such a profound sense of belonging. It was, after all, an inanimate object. But in that moment, it was confirmation of a life that I had lived, a life relegated to stories, photo albums, and memories captured in the cerebral cortex of my brain.

Despite 18 years of life packed into old passports, photo albums, old journals, and letters that my mom kept through the years, in many people’s eyes I have no right to say that Pakistan was home, even less rights to saying that I am from Pakistan. My rights to the country are defined by outsiders who tell me who I am and where I am from.

It brings up many emotions and deep empathy for the many around me who, in this era of massive displacement, struggle silently in the same way.

In a beautiful essay called “Reconciling with Less Home: Between Haiti and Me” Martina Fouquet writes:

The real question is who determines where we belong?

Martina Fouquet in Catapult Magazine

Perhaps what people don’t realize about their challenges to our concepts of home and where we say we are from are that the challenges act like a knife cutting to the core of who we are. The knife cuts deep, and we are left with our own origin questions, self-doubt raising its ugly head telling us once again that we don’t really belong. The internal dialogue that we thought we had silenced so long ago emerges once again, loud and accusatory: “You don’t really belong. You aren’t Pakistani. You left years ago.”

“But that’s not really home for you” or “That’s not where you’re really from” viewed as benign statements to many presents as a challenge to personhood and origin to another.

I don’t know what the answer is to arguments of origin, other than reminding myself once again that no one gets to tell any of us where home is. It is uniquely ours to determine where and why. Our stories may not fit into tidy boxes that connect within the experiences of others, but that’s not a problem we need to solve or a burden we need to bear.

Despite awkward questions, arguments, and discussions on home and origin, the paradoxical gift of this journey is that sometimes less home becomes more home, our lives richer for the multiple places we are privileged to call home.

Home is more than just a place where we come from, it is a part of us. And the longer we distance ourselves from home, the less complete we are.

Martina Fouquet

In Memory of a Friend, In Memory of a Community

Published on by Marilyn18 Comments

The news came, as it does these days, over the waves of social media. It was the death of a childhood friend, the news posted by her brother. Within minutes, a community of us, some who hadn’t seen Ruthie for many years, others who saw her this past June, and still others who were with her recently were collectively remembering, collectively grieving.

Ruthie was three years younger than me, a classmate and friend of my younger brother, Dan. She was petite and pretty with a smile that radiated from her bones to her face. She came from a dynamic family, all of them uniquely gifted musically and relationally.

I had the chance to see Ruthie in early June at a reunion for those of us connected to Pakistan. It was the first time I had seen her since 1993 when she visited Cairo with her boyfriend Mark, the man who would later become her husband. We had just left our beloved Maadi community and moved to a different area of Cairo. I was getting used to a new flat in a new part of the city, the kids were anticipating a new school, and my husband was starting a new job. In the midst of all that new came the familiarity of an old friend. Every morning before she and Mark went off exploring the city we would laugh and talk. Every evening we would do the same. The familiar mixed with the new, a gift of memory and discovery.

As I talked to her this summer, I brought up the memory. I was delighted that she, too, remembered. I learned that it had been a key moment in her life with Mark. I knew as I was speaking with her that cancer cells were overwhelming her healthy cells, that she was fighting a hard battle with the tools of chemotherapy, gifted doctors, and prayers of “Thy will be done.” I saw the deep love that she and her husband had formed through the years, a love large enough to embrace four biological and twelve adopted children. But I knew that I only saw and heard a fraction of what her journey had included.

The service was at two in the afternoon, Albanian time. It was broadcast as a gift to many around the world who, through computer screens, could participate in honoring her life.

As I sat in my living room in Boston, miles away from Albania, I began to see others from my Pakistan family and community sign on. With each one, came a rush of memories and thoughts. Ruthie was little sister, mentor, friend, classmate, big sister, and more depending on who you were and how you knew her. Most of all, she was one of us.

In our small community we shared tragedies like they were our own. When a father or mother of one of our friends died, it was like losing a beloved family member. The limbs on our missionary community tree stretched wide and when one of them was gone, no matter how we lost them, it meant leaves and fruit, nourishment and love were gone. These many years later we still feel losses when we hear of the death of someone we loved, someone we knew. No matter if it was another lifetime, they were part of us, and we feel the ache. The names still come to me – Dale, Carolyn, Angela, Val, Joy, Roy, Stan, Tim….and these are only a few of the ones that we have lost. Some were long, slow deaths, others were quick, tragic accidents – no matter, the way they died, their deaths put another nail in a community coffin.

Yesterday we grieved the loss of another. Yet, it was not only her life that we grieved. It was all of it – the loss of one brought up many other losses. In grieving for Ruthie, we had permission to grieve for lost community, lost time, and lost childhood. In grieving the loss of one of us, we once again felt saudade, that wistful longing for what no longer exists. In seeing her life, the adult version of Ruthie featuring a life lived large with joy and love, we perhaps questioned our own scarcity and unwillingness to live large, our inability to love with abundance and live generously.

“Everything precious is costly” were words that were said of Ruthie at the memorial service. Her beloved Mark, her children, her parents, her siblings, and her community are already experiencing the costly loss of wife, mom, daughter, and sister. And we on the periphery, we hear those words and know their truth, for we have lived and witnessed an extraordinary and precious community, gone but still glimpsed in memorials and memories.

But this much I will tell. What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.

Frederick Buechner

Stones of Remembrance – Heritage

Published on by Marilyn3 Comments

This past weekend I attended a reunion for others like me who, though not Pakistani, have a deep connection and love for Pakistan through work or through a third culture childhood. After three years of limited contact with these folks, we gathered together in the heart of the Ozark mountains, the kitsch of Branson far enough away to not interfere with our conversation and connections.

Through the years I grow more and more grateful for this heritage that I am gifted, the sense of belonging I can feel with someone 40 years younger or 30 years older than I am.

Coming from all over the world, we celebrated this legacy. There was no need to explain our love of hot curry and airports, our fierce defense of Pakistan and our comfort with travel. We were a group of people who remember the smoke of wood fires as dusk settles over our mountain home away from home, the spicy garlic of chicken karahi, the thick gravy of chicken korma eaten with a hot chapati, the delight of a clear day after a long monsoon, and the joy of sitting in daisy filled fields just minutes from our school. We are people who remember long bus rides up a steeply curved mountain road, vendors hawking at train stations, and crowded bazaars where we searched for bangles and fabric. We are an eclectic group who grew up with a steady diet of old Christian hymns coupled with hearing the call to prayer five times a day. We are men and women of all ages who have experienced the sights, sounds, and smells of Pakistan resurrected in unlikely places, bringing on waves of saudade, that wistful longing for what no longer exists. We are people who have known God’s presence within Pakistan, whether felt through the whisper of wind through pine trees, the sound of the call to prayer, or the sound of ocean waves on Karachi beach.

In March, I spoke to a group of women at our parish. I was invited to share my journey under the theme of “Journeys of Faith.” I titled my talk “Stones of Remembrance” based on a chapter in the book of Joshua in the Old Testament. The story is about God telling Joshua to have each of the tribes of Israel pick up a stone and take it to the middle of the Jordan River so that they could remember God’s faithfulness. I love the concrete picture in this account, the action of picking up a stone, carrying it to a place and having it serve as a reminder of what God has done.

The first stone I talked about was the stone of heritage, the Christian faith that was passed down to me by my parents and the small community that grew me, a gift of faith embodied in my home and school. I included in the stone of heritage the uniqueness of being a little white girl growing up in a Muslim context where Islamic faith echoed in the call to prayer outside of our doors, shaping me with its zeal and devotion.

I was reminded over the past few days of the beauty of this stone of remembrance, the gifts of a heritage that includes shared identity and memories, faith that is based on foundational truths and worked out in different Christian traditions.

In this beautiful setting, we experienced much laughter and joy and many tears and memories of those who have died. We heard updates on Pakistan and a retelling of countless stories, there was bollywood and qawwali, creative presentations and not as creative presentations. There was occasionally that wistful longing for the past, but it was so much more than that.

Because the true beauty of these reunions is that they give us strength to walk forward and remind us that there are others who have traveled a similar journey. They are reminders of a shared heritage, a unique group of people shaped by a distinctive background with its gifts and its challenges.

Gathering and remembering makes us stronger, helps us to remember that we are all a part of a bigger story that is being written around the world and in our hearts.

Thresholds

Published on by Marilyn1 Comment

Amidst all this madness, all these ghosts and memories of times past, it feels like the world around me is crumbling, slowly flaking away. Sometime, when it’s this late at night, I feel my chest swell with a familiar anxiety. I think, at these times, that I have no more place in my heart for Pakistan. I cannot love it any more. I have to get away from it for anything to make sense; nothing here ever does. But then the hours pass, and as I ready myself for sleep as the light filters in through my windows, I hear the sound of those mynah birds. And I know I could never leave.

Fatima Bhutto, Songs of Blood and Sword

It’s a blue, blue sky and for the first time this year I have the joy of sitting outside to drink my coffee.

Several of these past days have started with a thick fog covering the area. The buildings in downtown Boston, usually easily visible from our upstairs window, covered in misty grey.

The thing with fog is that you feel it will last forever even though your head tells you that’s ridiculous. So there’s this tug between feeling and thinking as you will yourself forward by head rather than heart.

But today? There is no fog. Just the crispest blue sky and a weather app promise of a warm day.

I’ve been thinking a lot about thresholds, largely because of a writing prompt from a group that I connect with on social media. One of the definitions of threshold is gate or door. Explore a bit more and this is expanded to mean “the place or point of entering or beginning.” Perhaps, too, the foggy beginnings of the last few days have made me think about thresholds. Thresholds as points of entering or beginning can be foggy and disorienting.

A couple of weeks ago, I learned from a Russian friend that you never hug someone over a threshold. You either go in, or come out. Once you are both out (or both in) then you can hug. She was emphatic that I not hug her across th threshold.

I have more questions for my friend, but what I love about this is that you have to commit. It’s like a mom saying “Either come in or go out, but don’t stand in the doorway.”

And that’s what happens when you are standing in the threshold of something. You can’t stay there. You have to pass through.

May and June are threshold months. They are months of soul aching goodbyes, each goodbye a mini death. They are months of nervous excitement and wanting to lengthen the moments and stretch them into hours and days. They are months of laughter at what has been and so many tears at what will no longer be.

Graduations, moves, sorting, packing up, giving away, wondering what’s to come – all of these and more are packed into threshold months.

In World’s Apart, I write this about one of my threshold moments:

“The magnitude of what I was leaving was not completely lost to me that night. Even in the midst of the goodbyes, I felt my throat catch. But as I look back I am overwhelmed by it. We left behind our entire lives the night of graduation. We said goodbye to all we knew. For the rest of our lives we would struggle to answer the question, ‘Where are you from?’ We would rage at those who attacked our adopted country, even as we raged at Pakistan herself. Some of us would be accused of crying ‘every time a cow died in Pakistan.’ Others would stoically move forward, silent about the impact of being raised in another world…..The next day I would leave Pakistan and never sleep in this house again, never walk up the hill to catch the school bus. The final chapter of life as a child in Pakistan had ended. I was the baby turtle, making its way slowly to the sea. No one could do it for me. In order to survive and thrive, I had to do it by myself.”

Of all the endings and beginnings I have had, this is the one that was most pivotal. It was my exit and my entrance – from Pakistan to the United States, from child to adult, from home to the unknown. It was clarity and fog, warmth and cold, peace and anxiety.

A couple of weeks before I stood on this threshold between worlds, I had some of the happiest moments imagineable. It was early summer in Murree and the weather was perfect. The moments of connection and friendship were memory-making; the joy I felt palpable. I knew who I was, I knew where I was going, I would make Pakistan and my little school in her mountains proud. Looking back, I am so grateful for those moments. They would sustain me for a long time when life became foggy and I no longer knew who I was or where I was going.

So for you who are on the threshold of something new, hold on to the moments. Honor what has been even as you prepare for what will be. You have been shaped and raised by the places and people that you will soon leave – know that this shaping is a gift and uniquely prepares you for your next journey. Take good, long looks at the people and places you have come to love. Those memory snapshots will give you strength for what’s to come.

As you step over the threshold of what is to come, remember this:

Thresholds are doorways into future wonder, but before you step through them, you need to be able to hold close what you are leaving behind.

[Image by Margarita Kochneva from Pixabay]