A Reflection by Hospitality Intern – Nozomi Imanishi
Every year up to 30 interns join the A Rocha Brooksdale team. One young woman, Nozomi, came to A Rocha in the midst of transition – shifting from full-time ministry overseas back to life in Canada. She poetically reflects on her three months here.
The darkly purple worms slip through the white roots of leeks, their movement loose and twisting through air, only to sink back into the soil like fish through water. I push back my shoulders and stretch out the band of muscle too tight across my back. I imagine pulling them apart, like we did as children. Each separate portion complete in itself, little autonomous beings moving surely away from their past.
And this makes me think of my past season. In a different land and particular field, and now here in this land and this field. Standing in the harvest, with a blunt knife I stare with unbelief at the bounty. I am caught in an ironic play and I want to smile at it all, but it’s still too soon. I look away from the ripe fields. The taste of leeks is too strong in my nose, the sting of leeks too strong in my eyes making me weep.
He walks by the gate in faded overalls, God across the fields. He slips past the periphery of my vision, a dim shadow that I jerk my head to follow only to have him disappear completely in the sudden heat of the sun cresting over the tree line. I think I see him half hidden behind the dahlias in the Children’s Garden, and once stroking the soft, gray head of the husky.
We spend a morning washing carrots, the woman besides me says, ‘it sounds like mah-jong tiles!’ and I am transported instantly to a different place. I roll the carrots across the wooden slats; hear the clatter of white tiles, of busy streets, of a million people eating, sleeping, breathing across the ocean. I’m filled with a calm I haven’t felt in weeks.
I am learning to spin. The foot of the spinning wheel like a rhythmic thud. Too much tension and the wool turns to twine and I yank the wheel to a stop, curses rising like the tide on my tongue. I pull the twine back through my fingers and twist the wool apart until it’s a thin, wispy thing again. “The thin between,” I think. I try to hold it loosely in my palm, like I know I’m supposed too and cannot.
“Are you processing?” I am asked one day at the bottom of the stairs. I’m holding a broom in one hand, the business end wrapped in a dozen spider webs. My mouth drops open and I stand there blind-sided. Am I processing? My time here? My previous time overseas? Processing, already? I am breathless, searching for an answer, when I finally notice her gaze on the jars of canned tomatoes on the folding table beside us. “Yes!” I say. “Yes, thank you for asking. I am processing. Tomatoes. Maybe later tomatillos.” Later at supper I add the jars of tomatoes to a sauce, God tasting with a spoon as I pour. I am able to say to him, without the heavy gravity of bitter cynicism, “yes, processing is a good thing.”
Sheets of slate rise up out of the water and I sit in a small cove. We are resting on an island just off the coast. The fir trees behind me drop thousands of needles into the salt water and it covers the entire surface of the ocean. Or at least enough for the large, dense ants, their hard bodies gleaming in black roundness, to walk across water. The hollow, one-drop beat of a raven echoes again my eardrum and I bend down, scoop a handful of needles up and squeeze a portion of sea into my mouth. It’s a salty tea, a cold communion.
There are long, connected days where I walk stumbling in my own blindness, and my innate talent to overcomplicate. There is no respite on the earth. Except that there suddenly is, one day in between the rows of broccoli we see something marvellous. A fir tree shower, the falling needles glittering in the weak autumn sun like pins of gold. And He is there. Of course He is there, dancing along the edge of forest. He reaches a hand towards us and I hesitate. My hands unclench, numb from the cold and wet from dew. I lift my hand – just half way. It’s all I can do.
That night under quilts and thick cotton blankets, I sit at the window. The fields glow white under a distant moon. He sits with me, smelling like the strong scent of wet earth and the sharp cold of first frost. He rests one hand on my foot, and my eyes slowly close. It’s enough. It is more than enough.
Photos: Christel Dalhuisen, Falling Frogs, Melissa Ong
