Five more sleeps in Bali.
We're sad to be leaving Bali. As I look back over the past months there have been many enriching experiences, some difficult moments, and, over all, it has been among the best six months of my life. There's something so special about this little island sandwiched between the Pacific and Indian Oceans; the tremendous richness of a centuries-old culture rooted in community and service to God that, when coupled with the beauty and pleasures of the tropics is hard to beat. The relative lack of regulation and loose or ill-defined rules can be liberating or maddening (say when you get pulled over and have money extorted by police) but certainly add to the invigorating experience.
There are many things I had planned to do but did not accomplish such as blog entries that didn't get written, I meant to learn Bahasa Indonesian, and I brought a stack of books that will go back into the suitcase along with my promise to read them in the future. Every day was, in some way or another, extremely rich. Living away from “normal” made me look at everything with fresh eyes, a sense of wonder I hope to maintain after I leave. It will be interesting to see our family integrate these experiences as we readjust to being in Canada.
One of the blog topics I intended to write about relates to the symbols of Bali which are often rooted in Hinduism. I'll mention just a couple of them. Many symbols are beautiful, others are interesting and some are repulsive. For example, the swastika is a popular symbol in Bali. No kidding! It is inscribed in temples, adorns rod-iron fencing, and even dangled from our driver's rear-view-mirror instead of fuzzy dice. The Balinese have no association of the swastika and evil, they see it as lucky (according to Wikipedia the original meaning is a “lucky or auspicious object... to denote good luck.”) Although I know it wasn't always an image of hatred, the swastika still takes me aback and I feel uneasy.
Another symbol that we've seen a lot in Bali is Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music and the arts. In some ways Saraswati is the patron of our trip. We originally chose Bali specifically for the children to attend Green School. And while here the kids have done unbelievable amounts of art. Maia almost single-handedly wore out dozens of markers, we've gone through hundreds of sheets of paper, Chloe and Maia were in a performance singing and dancing in the Wizard of Oz, and the list of art projects goes on and on. As for music, it has permeated our trip. For months we slept to the sounds of the Gamelan echoing around the river valley, the kids have had music instruction at school and Ava has learned to play guitar and bass; we came to Bali with two guitars and we will leave with three.
Saraswati may not be done with us yet either. Alex is registered in a Medical Informatics program at University of California at Davis and starts in a couple of weeks. The last few weeks have been overshadowed by an application I submitted to UBC for a Master of Health Administration. As I await the results of that process I am consumed with studying for the GRE and I write that test in a couple weeks. Saraswati, what do you have in store for us next?
A friend wrote a book with the title We Feel Good Out Here about a northern aboriginal girl being on the land. I feel I now better understand what it means to just feel good somewhere. In the case of our family, we feel good in Bali. We all look healthier than when we arrived (a fact I am repeatedly told by our Scottish/Dutch friend who likes to remind me how pale and jaded I seemed to him upon our arrival) and we are all re-engaged with one another and what's around us. An example of this new closeness is our kids moving from three kids in three bedrooms to three kids in one bed! Certainly just having more time is key.
As we prepare to return to Canada it leaves me to question the basics about how we live. It's not about location it's about maintaining this renewed sense of closeness in our family. Can we do that in our “normal” life? Can we resist the temptation to fill our plate to overflowing when we're in Canada? There are so many wonderful opportunities and we always want to eat big at life's buffet.
Maybe we're just consoling our sadness about leaving by thinking about returning. But given just how good we feel here, we've asked ourselves the question “why wouldn't we return?” Any answer we come up with feels hollow. The kids would accept coming back as they now know how life works here and are connected to friends. For now, we don't know if we'll be back we just know it's so so so sad to leave. A friend told me recently, “it's not enough for you to want to be in Bali – Bali also has to want you back.” And maybe that is the question that remains to be answered: will Bali want us back? For now, I'll try to stop crying because it's over and keep smiling because it happened.
And what a lot there is to smile about!
Thank you Bali!
Riah
