Saturday morning, September 13, I am sitting in the coffee shop reading the Boston Globe noting the buildup of troops in Kuwait and debating whether to cancel plans with Nancy so I can go to the Bobby-on-his-way-back-to-Bosnia fest on Sunday. Tim asks if there's any news in the paper. I tell him 5000 troops are on their way to Kuwait. He's surprised. He says he hasn't seen a paper for days. I too am surprised. And a little depressed by it. I muse on whether the Bosnian elections will be violent, never mind free and fair, and I am glad Bobby is returning after the election is over. The winds of war just keep blowing all over the place.
I reread my journal entries for the 2 weeks since I got back from Russia and I am astonished at how much I've left out. Even claiming I have nothing to say! So I've had jet lag and a bad cold. That just makes it all the easier to politely step around the elephant in the living room without ever acknowleding that it's there.
It's Saturday afternoon, August 31,1996: I'm jet-lagged but forcing myself to stay awake. More Egans than have been in the same time zone in many a moon gather at the picnic table in Mom's backyard for lobsters and clams and corn on the cob. All stuff Bobby likes. He shows us pictures of Bosnia and of his trip to Hungary with Donald and Michael. I show him pictures of Russia (I hit the 1 hour photo at CVS as soon as I got up). We share stories. Somebody mentions today is the anniversary of Steven's death. Thomas says:"It's just another day." and we know he doesn't mean it that way.
Family gatherings are like that. The living room is filling up with elephant poop and nobody mentions the elephants. Elephants everywhere. Alert: overuse of metaphor. Return to plain language.
A year ago on August 31 Steven died of AIDS.
This year on August 31 we are eating lobster and corn on the cob under summer skies. Tomatoes from Thomas's garden are gigantic and juicy. Steven would've been proud.
We're sitting at the table talking about Sarajevo. Bobby is talking about bomb damage assessment. Elizabeth says "I feel like I'm not even here." Then: "I feel like I'm going down a black hole." I ask her if she feels left out of the grownups' conversation. She says yes. At 8 she's way too young to understand bomb damage assessment.
Bobby showed us a video he shot in and around Sarajevo. Oddly the image that struck me was sunflowers tied into sheaves in the field next to the road exactly like the sunflowers on the road to the Vladivostok airport. The sunflowers here are in a single straight row. I want to write a poem about the sunflowers but I can't.
Bobby shows me a picture of a truck. My brain still being in Cyrillic alphabet mode, I immediately read the Cyrillic on the sign and exclaim: "that says IFOR!" I'm so proud of my newfound ability to decode Cyrillic without my secret decoder ring. Bobby says: "what was your first clue?" "Huh?!?" "It says it in English right next to it." Believe it or not, I didn't even see that until he pointed it out.
For years my parents' kitchen featured a small wooden sign that read: "Do Everything with Love". It hung over a bulletin board. The sign was never straight. Somebody was always trying to straighten it at family gatherings. I don't know what happened to the sign when my mother had the kitchen redone a few years after my father died. But I still remember its lopsided message. And I think on balance we do what we do because of it. Rebuild Bosnia with love. Raise Elizabeth and Andrea with love. Study Russian water pollution with love. Cook for the frat boys with love. Grow tomatoes with love. Rescue cats with love. Gather together with love.
All day today I've tried to force myself to write from the heart about deep emotions. What's above is the closest I could come.
I spent most of the day putting the remainder of my travel journal on-line. I'm almost done. Then on to the finishing touches of the non-journal portion of the trip report. The report is taking longer than the trip did!
I'm about written out now.