Six of us stood on the lawn last Friday, shivering in the afternoon cold, holding balloons and flowers and a box of yummy treats. S, the birthday girl, burst out her front door, delightedly surprised. Physically distanced and smiling beneath our masks, we carefully nibbled on a perfectly sweet and sour lemon tart and huddled for a quick picture, close but not too close, so passers-by wouldn’t report us to the Corona Cops.  

“We had such a fun plan,” M told her. And we did. An especially fun, secret escape had been cooking for our especially fun friend who’d had, like most, an especially un-fun year. Surely things would have calmed down by mid-November, we had thought. Surely this awful abnormal would be wrapping up by winter, we reasoned. Surely by then we would be moving about in life without the fear of death.    

“Remember when we went on the flying trapeze for your fortieth?!” M said. Our eyes wrinkled in laughter as we remembered that particular celebration. S was all about it, climbing up the ladder, kicking and swaying through the air. D wouldn’t budge; both feet never left solid ground. Our bubbly K launched off the ledge and swore like a sailor from take-off to landing. M did her giggling thing and gave a graceful go at it and G cackled and hooted and made everything next-level funny as she expertly knows how to do. I remembered how it felt to fly, a rush of disorientation, unsure what was up or down and clinging to the hope that the net would catch me. I finally let the bar go, peed my pants a little and somersaulted off the fumbling web of ropes. Now that was a circus worth remembering.

S and I share a big ‘ole treasure chest of memories – all the way back to when we would, exhausted, sling our babies in their “buckets” into the office and rock the carriers with our feet while we talked and typed. My favorite times together are actually not in the city we both call home, but in another land 10,000 miles away on the continent of Africa, in a country called Eswatini (formerly – and still to me – known as Swaziland) and in a small village called Mkhomobkati. After a four-year wait, S and I had planned to lead our third team of volunteers to Mkhombokati in June of 2020.

We couldn’t wait to spend 20 hours in the air, 5 hours on a highway and another 45 minutes down a bumpy dirt road to reunite with the adults and children whose familiar faces have become beloved friends. But the “year of canceled” snuffed out that particular wish.     

S and I lead well together. Me with my big, animated ideas and she with her thoughtful approach to execution. She, up before the alarm pulling on a perfectly ironed t-shirt and me dragging one eye open, not yet ready to pull on yesterdays’ skirt. Both of us spending the night awake, listening to the rain pound on the glass windows, knowing it must be pouring into our friends’ thatched huts. Oh, I miss the rains down in Africa. 

S and I have relished our time together in Swaziland. Away from the bustle, beeps and barks of life that tell us what we have to do and where we have to be, we savor that time to just be – bubble-blowing silly selves, in no rush to be anywhere but right there, happy playing hopscotch on a patch of red dirt. In that place, through those rickety gates, something inside of us flourishes fierce. Pieces of our tender, bare souls awaken and connect with the kids we have now watched grow up. Through the looping fingers and reaching arms of our Swazi friends we freely give and receive love in a great balance of grace – we, and they, both need something the other has to give.

And so, we wait for that day to come again. When the travel is done and the bus arrives and we step off into the heat of the afternoon sun as it warms the African earth. When we first hear those mostly bare feet in the distance crunching the brush across the too-dry river bed, walking and walking, not fast, but forward. Babies on the backs of ones that are still babies themselves; teenagers sauntering, draped and slung; young boys kicking a ball made of plastic and young girls skipping, holding each others hands. The puffs of dust will precede them, a tide of 200 kids that slowly swarm toward us, each dragging a stick for the fire that will cook their first and only meal of the day. Until then, we wait with intention, knowing that the word “wait,” in the Hebrew language, is defined as hope. So we wait not with resignation, but with hopeful faith, in expectation and anticipation.

Because someday surely again we will be able to move about in life and go back to doing some of the things that make us feel most alive. The God of time – and timing – knows when. And surely then my friend S will be able to blow out a birthday candle – and the wish we share will come true.