On Packing

I've been purging life's detritus of late. 

I've faced my inner hoarder, the girl whose freezer overflows with a stash of frozen bananas (fourteen if you must know), endless quantities of ends of bread and an empty container of ice cream that remained in the freezer for who knows how long because I was too embarrassed to acknowledge by tossing it promptly just how quickly I finished eating it. I've been chasing after loose ends, making calls to soandso about suchandhsuch, going on errands to find a bitofthisabitofthat. 

I've been gathering these loose ends and dropped threads together into a mound of yesterday's newness and today's trash, moving what I need and tossing what I don't. It's funny how it all builds up around me. 

It isn't comfortable to say goodbye to my detritus. Its build up makes me feel comfortable, at home. I know I am at home in a place when my freezer has fourteen bananas, a past collected with high hopes of future banana bread. But even though packing is a temporary bother, it means new beginnings. In this case, in two (goodness gracious, two!) days I'll be boarding a plane and heading south to a town in Honduras where thunder strikes the night sky and where the cobblestone streets hum with stray dogs and taxis and streams of people. I'll be serving with UrbanPromise Honduras once again, this time as intern director. It is a good beginning I'm moving towards in the midst of present endings. 

I want to start chasing after words again in the midst of my travels. Words have been elusive lately, easily found to write a book report or an email, but less available when just for fun. But they help me to piece life together, to figure out how yesterday becomes tomorrow and how my hoarded bananas are actually (perhaps?) a symbol of hope. 

I've decided to use this blog (rather than kristin--marie@blogspot.ca) for this year's journeying so please take a look here now and again to see some pictures of where I am and what I'm doing and (hopefully) some words that strive to piece it all together.