Focus

It’s easy to get blown away by how different my life is today from what it was a year ago. I sit on the beach outside my house and I look down the gentle curve of Majuro framing the lagoon and I remember that a year ago I was holed up against the rain with cabin fever.

Sometimes difference is good.

There are times though when the contrast is bad.

This coral atoll is only 30 miles long and at is widest is probably no more than 200 yards. Trash piles and accumulates with nowhere to go. The problem is compounded because when anyone is done eating anything, they just throw the wrapper down. It’s kind of shocking at first. It used to make sense because before the trash was all coconut husks and pandanous leaves. The Pepsi cans of today are a little bit more ubliqitous.

Now plastic bags roll like tumble weeds and diapers do their best imitation of jellyfish. It’s enough to get me swooning for the pristine state parks of Oregon.

Either way, when I feel myself drifting too far away from anchor and home is a long way off, I just bring my focus in tighter. If you bring your focus in close enough then it doesn’t seem so strange and you can find home most anywhere.

There are pine trees in the Marshall Islands. Yeah, it’s pretty weird but someone brought them in and the trees did what they did and now there are big sweeping pines poking out of coconut tree horizons. This weekend on my walk to Ejit I stopped beneath a pine tree and saw pine needles mixed with sand and it was just like the beach in Tillamook where I go camping every summer. At least a tiny part of it.

My classroom is on the second floor and during recess I lean my elbows on the rail and look out on the small baseball field. The kids all line up to bat. They use an old stick rather than a bat but a pitch is a pitch, a strike is a strike and girls versus boys is a battle we can all get behind.

Coffee is a godsend in the morning. It’s divine. I drink it here same as anywhere.

Sometimes when my students are not behaving and won’t stop talking in class I’ll pace up the rows one by one singing Yankee Doodle Dandy at the tops of my lungs until everyone is cracking up. A clown is always a clown anywhere you are and my voice will be terrible no matter what corner of the map I’m on.

There’s a Salvation Army a few doors down from where I live with a perfect cement basketball court. Right now we are smack dab in the middle of the city league tournament to see who the champion of Majuro is. Sometimes I watch the games from the second storie balcony of the church with my students. We chomp on gum and sunflower seeds and root, root, root for the home team. They are called “The Uglies.”

I went to the hospital and waited for two hours while I killed three pens filling out enough paperwork to make college seem like kindergarten. Heartwarming.

I still like the adventure that living in a different place and culture brings. I still get a kick out of doing unique island things like swimming in one of the deep channels that punch through this atoll like Morris Code. However, there are also times when I just want the familiar, and I have been pleasantly surprised by how I’ve found it.

I guess that old adage that it’s a small world after all is completely true if you bring the focus in tight enough.