double take

My goal today was make my way up north and do a lot of walking.  Walk from oil change shop to relatives’ house to university to library and back again.  Especially since it’s Earth Day (a holiday about which we were reminded even at church last Sunday!).  But alas I didn’t do any of those.  The gloominess of the sky, while not threatening, was not overly inviting either so alas when I dropped of the car, I went next door to the hotel to read in its lobby.  I drove to the university via a sick friend’s mailbox and parked it while I walked through campus.  That counts right?  So today I noticed that green thoughts aren’t always green actions (though I have been really good about following the speed limit so that should save a little bit of fuel and the brakes.)

I also discovered a funny but delightful things that happens to people’s minds after extended absences.  I saw two of my old professors today but both had to do double-takes.  It’s not that I’ve changed all that much, in fact one commented that I look as 12, I mean young, as I always have.  It was more that I had been such a common sight in the daily routine that recapping the reality of my comings and goings and final ploppings down in their chairs was quite surreal.  And yet, these moments have been some of my most treasured over the last 5 days.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed showing up to church or school or the grocery store and getting a big hug as a result of a double take.  Some didn’t have a chance to do a double take as they were ushered, called out to or encouraged to go see me with outstretched arms.  Either way is good for me; it’s nice to be a familiar face that has the opportunity to grow more familiar in the future.

And yet I am wondering about our response to each others’ presence.  There is an element of wanting that welcome-home feeling and experience every time you come into a room, and yet, the flip side has us wanting to know and feel as if we belong.  We can be part of the routine, the landscape, the normal conversation patterns, the consistent mouth to feed or voice to be heard.  I ponder how I really want to be treated.  I don’t want to be a guest because of the gap in relating with people but being “family” requires a desire and/or obligation to pitch in and familiarize myself with the vacuum as much as I am with the people sharing the house with me.  Regardless .an assurance of love and appreciation for each others’ presence can be know in either circumstance.  It’s in that relating that we can be welcomed continually while also coming in, plopping on the couch and chatting away, sans a double-take.