c h a n g e

I was born into circumstances that I took to immediately: four devoted, attentive, almost doting adults, plus one older brother who cared significantly less for the spotlight than I. Growing up on the farm, it was just me, Adam, my mum, Kap and the grandparents. Though I was only my mother's second child, I was her last, and I took on the last-born mentality as easily as if there were a dozen ahead of me. My aunt didn't have any children, and I don't remember ever having to "share" any of my adults, so I learned to live as if I would always be the center of attention.

When I got a bit older, someone - probably my mum - told me "Everything changes." Such an absolute was lost on me at the time. Surely not everything changes, I reasoned. If there are no constants, how does anyone ever feel secure? I comforted myself by concluding that she must have meant other people's lives changed, perhaps because they didn't go to church, work hard enough or vote Republican, but I didn't believe any changes could really affect me very profoundly. We would all go on as we always had - Adam making C's and playing endless baseball games, Kap doing everything with painstaking correctness and being a lawyer, Grandma making cornbread and sweet tea, Mum being golden-haired, beautiful and spectacularly talented, Grandpa farming and working until he was filthy and not allowed in the house until he'd shed the soiled clothing in "the washroom."

I know better now, of course, though that knowledge is only in my head and not as yet absorbed by my very blood and bones. I haven't lost anyone I love; they all still seem immortal and as constant and immovable as Stone Mountain. But I fear that change more than anything else.

Grandma's brother was diagnosed with terminal cancer this week. He probably won't live to see next week. I barely know him and can't even recall what he looks like, but to her he's a baby brother she's known for 67 years. At 75, she's lost her parents and various family members. She knows well what that change feels like. And yet, when I called on Saturday to talk to her about it, her voice shook and cracked as if she were a young woman facing her first loss. She cried a little but tried not to, and I felt guilty because I knew she was trying to spare me, the petted, feted little farm girl, her grief. If she buckles under the weight of such terrible change and loss, what on earth will I - much weaker by all accounts - do when I have to face it?

The life I lead is all about change. I travel a lot. I change jobs, friends and locations without blinking an eye. I chase that kind of change. But until this week, it didn't occur to me that I'm chasing it in an attempt to keep it from catching me. If I can somehow become inured to the constant change, learn how to rely on nothing, avoid becoming comfortable with any circumstances, then maybe I can spare myself the awful pain of a change I didn't ask for and would die to avoid. Maybe I can adjust to the shock as quickly as I can shake the effects of jet lag and get on with things. In my head, I know that such change will find me and bring me to my knees. In my heart, that irrational organ, I still cling to the hope of being spared. 

musings

The Northampton suburbs look pretty much as you'd expect them to: tall brick homes with neatly trimmed front yards and driveways with Audis and BMWs, which aren't nearly as posh in Europe as they are back home. Everyone drives like an idiot on the nearby M1 and takes the innumerable roundabouts at fifty miles per hour. "Two cars passed me on the way to pick you up," Chris tells me on the ride back to his place, and I can't tell if he is proud or furious.

This is my first trip since moving back to Kyiv two weeks ago. A bit soon, I admit, but the freedom my job allows is better than any narcotic. If I can scrape together the fare, find a couch to surf and free wifi and get enough to eat, I can go anytime, to any place. Maybe I'll go and visit my cousin Matt in Germany after here, I muse. Maybe not. Dubrovnik looks nice. But then, I really want to take that trip with Jaemi at the end of July.

I applied to graduate school before leaving the States. I found a truly perfect Master's program at a university near my mum's house and put everything I had into the application. It was what I wanted. Maybe it still is. Hard to tell, with this singular high so freely available and so seductive and addicting. The more I see of the world, the more I want to see. Nothing is as beautiful as somewhere I've never been. It's like a perfectly intact, tantalizingly large Christmas gift that my very fingers ache to unwrap.

So are the people. There is always a woman more beautiful, a child more intelligent and precocious, a man stronger and more charming to be found. Out here, wherever that is, I can always find wonder. I never lack for breathless passion or stunning beauty. Every day is a new gift at which to marvel and to savor the coinciding joys of youth and freedom. I will never have them together again. What, indeed, is the sense of pouring my heart into textbooks and lecture notes when it longs so much for endless, exhilarating adventure - and can have it readily?

I even relish the fatigue of a long travel day, my passport newly stamped and my backpack getting heavier. Meeting the challenge of remembering enough of the local language, of getting a decent exchange rate, of managing to pack with impossible lightness is a CV-worthy accomplishment that makes me feel stronger and more confident every time I do it well. I never get tired of being happily weary from travel, with all I need on my back and the world at my feet.

Millay once exclaimed in verse, "Oh, world, I cannot hold thee close enough!" I know how she felt. I'll never live long enough to satisfy my appetite for exploration or find just the right words to describe all that fills my heart and mind. But that won't stop me from trying.