AfricanKelli

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I flew to Phoenix this week for work. It was a turn-around trip in one day – some 19 hours door-to-door.

This is the new bar for exhaustion. The standard used to be post-marathon. Or at least post-time zone/hemisphere/continent jump. Alas, with a plantar still fasciating and a passport gathering dust – the occasional back and forth commuting adventure drains me dry.

I plopped into my airplane seat home, already 15 hours after I’d left Nelson, ready to catch up with podcasts and review notes for the next day. Instead, I quickly found myself in a lengthy conversation with the man in the middle seat, who’d arrived in a cloud equal parts nicotine and sorrow. His eyes prematurely creased, teeth stained, hands and face spotted by his age-old habit.

And then, just as I was about to roll my tired eyes back in my head, turn up the iPod and try to ignore the smell of stale cigarettes permeating our area, I noticed he was crying. Gentle tears flowed down his cheeks as he studied the ticket in his lap.

“Where are you from, sir?” I said quietly, reaching out for the calloused hand of a laborer.

“Cuba.”

“Ay, si? Cuba? Cubano! Que parte?”

We continued for an hour while, coincidentally, stalled at the gate — the plane’s fuel cells were being repaired. He left Cuba 30 years ago after serving as a merchant marine. He’d sailed around the world. But today, his journey was from Tucson, via Phoenix, Denver, Charlotte and Miami to attend the funeral of his mother.

She’d lived a good life. A long life. She’d escaped Cuba too. He’d see his siblings and several of his adult children when he finally arrived. He was certain she would be proud of him for making the trip. But…

I waited. He reddened with embarrassment, coughing up so much of his life to a stranger. Yet, he rattled on like a boiling pot.

The trip was such a luxury. He felt guilty for the money he’d had to borrow to get the flights. And here he was without any money for food or any way to buy flowers for her service. But his heart truly ached because the one person he wanted sitting next to him was instead in Sonora, Mexico. Deported. His mujer had been swooped up in an immigration raid. She’d left behind her 16 year old American-born daughter, who he was now caring for.

“I drive her to school every day. She’s not mine, but she is mine.”

Now somewhere over northern Arizona at 30,000 feet, I simply nodded. I gave him what I could – my full attention.

And in a moment of grace, the woman sitting next to him on the aisle spoke up – hours after the confessional began.

“Señor,” she began with an accent I recognized as Mexican. “Señor.” I wondered if she was calling him, or God? She took his hand, looked him in the eye, and began to pray for his family and comfort him. A business owner in Denver, her grandparents were from Chihuahua. She knew the sorrow of having family spread across the world and not always being able to put the pieces of life together the way one wished.

The next hour involved the three of us discussing life, love, sorrow and faith. By the time the landing gear dropped, she’d opened her wallet and given him money for those meals and flowers. I passed off a bit of food I’d been given for the flight. His tears dried and slowly, a smile revealing missing teeth emerged.

Looking at a sea of amber lights shining from the city floor below, I found comfort. Refueled. Full of grace.

~K

You know those women you have in your life who are always put together? Not in a sense of perfect makeup or blown out hair, or even looking like a catalog. Truly stylish. Women who carry themselves with a sense of personal flare that is different from anyone else you know, but who pull it off?

Not the best photo to showcase Min’s fashion side, but I couldn’t find a good one. Trust me.

I’ve two women like this who I’ve regularly admired: Mini and Kara. Mini is a childhood friend who can wear a sequin mini-skirt, sky high boots and a tunic and somehow make it look like she’s ahead of both Gaga and Vogue. Kara is just the same. The girl has the most interesting collection of handbags, jewelry and shoes. She mixes and matches with a sense of fashion I truly envy.

Yep. Kara’s gorgeous. 

So, I nudged Kara last year into sharing her sense of style with me. She regularly blogs about her fashion choices and I thought it would be fun if we each shared something out of our wardrobes, monthly, that make us smile. (With, you know, the inherent selfish motive of hoping she helps me look at what I already own with new, fashionista eyes.) This month, she’s rocking turquoise. (My love of the stone is long documented. Several of my most cherished pieces of jewelry are chunky turquoise gifted by my grandmother Maxine.)

I also love chunky jewelry. I have a rule – I only ever wear two pieces of jewelry at one time. Earrings and a ring. Necklace and bracelets. Never all four at once. As a result, I often lean on big pieces of bright color that make me happy. Like this necklace I picked up in Johannesburg.

Or this one I bought in Cameroon from a street vendor.

I also love this ring my parents gave me for my 31^st birthday.

My sense of style is much simpler. I wear mostly solid colors. I love the Gap – as boring and mundane as it may be. And I fully believe a great handbag can tie together an entire outfit. I often wear thrift store finds paired with brightly colored clogs and a handbag that cost half a paycheck. Thrifty-chic? I wouldn’t go so far. But I would say I’ve got a lot to learn from Mini and Kara about putting together an outfit and rocking it with a sense of confidence.

Now, the challenge is to do so without the shopping. Anyone else working on this?

~K

I like having journals around — to collect prayers, notes, and odd observations. Sometimes they are filled with grocery lists. Pretty much all of them end up unfinished because I get distracted with the bright and shiny of a new journal!

New year, new paper, new start. A few I created this week as gifts for friends:

For Bruce, who is traveling regularly to Africa, doing amazing work. I used an old almanac to include geography text on the back:

A birthday gift with a bit of Heather Bailey flare.

For Dana, a PhD student in Forestry and birthday girl. I finally had a chance to use this patch, which I’d been holding on to for years in my sewing box:

It scratched a creative spot in my brain to use different materials — sewing cardstock, vintage trim, fabric, paint, stamps, hot glue. I’m trying to make more time to for this type of play; doing so simply makes me happier and more patient.

~K

There is a life I want to lead, a person I want to be, and there is reality. The two seem to be growing farther apart, which has my inner perfectionist freaking out and ripping things off the walls. So to speak.

Part of this blue weather can be explained on my recent dose of Phoenix sun. In Arizona, my calendar is full. I’m surrounded by friends who love me enough to shake me when I’m being ridiculous. And of course this time of year, the weather was glorious. Nelson pranced around the park as if to say, “DUDE! NO SNOW!”

He’s eloquent that way.

This holiday was miserable for my family. Truly, painfully miserable. My grandparents aren’t doing well and the stress of their on-going health issues made my parents sorrowful and despondent. Seeing my dad this sad shakes me. Knowing there isn’t a damn thing I can do fills me with useless, bitter rage. My mom’s sadness comes out as frustration. Pair all of this heavy emotion with a freak winter storm that kept my parents holed up in a cheap motel en route to Tucson, delaying their arrival by more than a day, and you can imagine how fun Santa’s arrival was.

The person I want to be would have wrapped my arms around my parents and told them how very sorry I am they are at this point in life. That watching their parents age and be sick must be so hard. That their sadness was my sadness and it was a pity our time together — one of two times a year we typically see each other — would not be ruined by the circumstances.

The person I am moped and played martyr. Once again, the only grandchild to show up for the holiday for either set of grandparents. Once again, the responsible one. Once again, the one who doesn’t run away from the sorrow of the situation, but doesn’t know how to deal with it anymore than anyone else. Because I’m not unbiased. I too am watching those I love slowly, painfully decline. I don’t know how to comfort my parents any more than I know how to help myself.

I do know the ways I have been trying to cope aren’t working. There is much to change in 2012.

~k

2011 will always be known as the year of Willie Nelson Mandela. Granted, there were a few other monsters crossed off the bucket list, but none of those wake me up each morning with a smile and a wagging pom pom tail screaming, “TODAY IS GOING TO BE THE BEST DAY EVER! CAN I GO OUTSIDE NOW?”

A few of my favorite photos from the year, including too many of the prized pup:

A year that begins in Africa can be nothing short of magical; 2011 didn’t disappoint.

Holy crikes. That’s how you do a year right. Thank you 2011! (I hear your younger sister 2012 brings great promise.)

~K