One horrible analogy

I told them I'd love to have been a fly on the wall when they first held that very first grandchild of theirs, in part because I'll never forget how incredibly moved I was--we were, 23 years ago, when the two of us first held our first grand baby. I've been thinking about them because I swear I can feel their profound joy 500 miles from here.

But what about the first-time parents? By now, they've likely brought that child home. By now, they know what lack of sleep feels like, what total devotion feels like. They love that child far beyond reason, but nothing is the same for them; nothing ever will be; and they can't help but know it.

It may well be the worst analogy of all time, but there is a kindred loss in the lives of those victims of the floods who find themselves suddenly homeless, although it's just plain bonkers to call the two transformations somehow analogous. For us--as for those new parents--"home" is something unfathomably new. Right now, to the parents of this newborn, nothing is the same. What's more, it's impossible for them to imagine what's ahead now and down the road. What's new, of course, is the biggest blessing any two people can ever receive.

One of the abiding troubles with our kind of homelessness is that it's very difficult to predict when--indeed, if--things will ever return to normal. Just yesterday, for the first time, I got my own computer back, but the keyboard is smaller and keys wholly different to the touch. I'm sitting at a student desk in a pretty darn nice student apartment, but it's not home. What's more, the longer we're here the more we, sadly and by force of habit, call this place "home," which it isn't and, as of August 1, will certainly not be.

Here's what I'm saying. Hundreds, even thousands of victims of the floods that roared up on all of our regional rivers feel what we do now, most all of them have far more acute pain. There is a constant struggle to remember home--and just as quickly as the old place comes into focus, to know, unequivocally, that whatever sweet moments sustained us pre-flood departed once the waters swept back to the river bed.

It's not going to be the same. It will never be the same. Try as we might, whatever gesellig we were able to create at home in the years before the flood won't be in the new home we try to muster. We have to create gesellig anew.

Things have changed for that young couple with their darling child; that new baby will change their worlds in ways they cannot fathom, but when they hold that child in their arms, when they watch the whole range of changes--first giggles, first smiles, first words--inevitably they will thank the Lord God Almighty for altering the course of their lives such that whatever they'd once thought of as home simply won't be. Theirs is a brand new world because their home place is now the residence of three.

Ours is also a brand new world--although without the joy of those new parents. We can return to a structure--and we will; but what was, won't be again. Our lives have changed, and the adjustment, I'm afraid, is going to take some time. We can't justgo home again.