Eight Days

Eight days left of my stay in Pakistan. In eight days, it will be exactly 5 months that I’ve been here with Tom, and it will also be when I will return to the US.

Only eight days left, to conclude one chapter in life, one chapter of our marriage. Such transitions are important, and should be commemorated, marked somehow. Sure, one can throw a party, but there must be other ways to prepare us for the end of one cycle and beginning of another? Without marking or acknowledging these transitions, our life would be like one long canal carrying water from point A to point B. But life is much richer and more complex, and hopefully in the process of getting from point A to point B we change and transform who we are; from a brook, to a stream, to river which merges with larger and larger rivers, until finally it becomes the ocean. I like this metaphor, because it implies that we get bigger. We get more expansive. As we navigate each life change, we are able to grow and expand. Also, like the water, we become deeper and more still.

In the eight days still left in Pakistan, while I continue to recover from typhoid fever, I shall mark the end of one chapter and prepare for the next.