7 July 2008
Flower Mound, TX, USA
We have moved back to America--but we're homeless and stuff-less until September when our shipment arrives on the boat and we move back into our house. Our "little" house on Armstrong Drive that could house 6 or 7 families from our branch in India. 10-12 if you put some in the garage or on the deck. What kind of crazy, sick world is this where we think such a house is too small (mainly because our stuff won't fit) and I just paid a whole boatload of money for a minivan with leather interior, a sunroof, airbags galore, and a conversation mirror? The amount of money we just paid for that minivan would be about 2 years of salary for Margaret, or 10 years of school for Lakshmi. How do we reconcile it?
While I was in India and a friend would be going to America, I'd say, "Go to Target for me!" I loved Target when I'd come home on home leave. Essential stuff, fun stuff, good bargains, stuff you didn't know you needed or wanted. And to be honest, it was one of things I daydreamed about when I felt excited about moving back to America.
Tonight at 9:00 pm, after putting my kids to bed, I hop into that brand spanking new Honda Odyssey and go to Target. I go down nearly every aisle and stay until they start dimming the lights and announcing for everyone to take their final purchases to the checkout line. Same delightful stuff, same solitary, dreamy feeling I remember from the last time I was in America. But I forgot about the empty feeling of standing in line with strangers, all of our carts full of stuff we probably need much less than we need to be home with our families in bed, or at least connecting with people we love in meaningful ways. I spend $63.00 (Poojah's monthly salary) and walk out of the now-darkened empty Target at closing time.
I load the fresh (yummy!) milk, various cheeses, clothes for Russell, my favorite pens and markers and toiletries into that fancy minivan and drive away. I open all the windows and turn off the A/C, yearning for something organic, something real in all this surreality. Oddly, I miss Anil (our driver). I miss the guard that would have met me at all the doors in India. I miss Margaret and Poojah and Lakshmi, and even that creepy guy that sat outside our gate. And I wonder how I can live as an American now? How can I live the American Dream without denying the ways that India changed me? How did it change me? I'm not sure. And then as I drive along I start sobbing. Why? For the people who will never see a Target? Of course not. Maybe mourning for the futility of such materialism?
And then it hits me. I am crying because I feel betrayed by Target. I realize that I was wrong to consider Target a friend worth sending my friends to visit for me. Target, as it turns out, is not my friend at all--at least not a good one, because I never walk away from it recharged. Same goes for Wal-Mart, a new car, a big house.
But I do have lots of human friends and family here in America I can reconnect with who will bring that meaning, that raw humanity I miss from India back to me.
But I can still shop at Target and drive my new minivan and live in my "big" house, right?
3 comments:
Let me know if you figure out how to reconcile that... I'm already struggling with that, I've still got a year before we come "home!" Until then... think of Target as a "friend" you don't completely trust and must be kept very close. And... GO TO TARGET FOR ME!!!!!!! :)
I'm jealous. You've learned, in a few short years, what it takes most people a lifetime (if they ever do) to learn.
You're lucky my dear, lucky to have those feelings. Lucky to have that van, a house, Target, and lucky at the same time to realize how blessed you are to have those things. I mean, so many people - they have and they don't understand what it means to NOT have.
You get it. I know that I don't truly get it, maybe we should all move to our own "India" for a few years so that we do.
Don't fret, the Lord has blessed you and it IS ok to be blessed.
luvs, aby
well said, Aby. you do GET IT, Min! and i want to thank you for sharing your experiences in India and thus helping me to GET IT a little more then i did before.
i have gained a greater appreciation for the blessings i enjoy (although not to the extent that you have, of course.) and i know that is the key, as long as we remember to count those blessings often, great or small, we can find great happiness in this life.
i count it as one of my greatest blessings to have you and Aby as my friends. love ya!
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