Soubhiyé

I am an early riser. I haven't always been an early riser but, now, at this point in my life, I can say I've been an early riser for most of it. 

In high school and college, I got up early for swim practice several times a week before class. At Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, this often entailed trudging across a frozen campus in the preternatural early morning dark. 

My first job in Boulder, Colorado was at a breakfast and lunch place called Rocky Mountain Joe's Cafe. Opening the restaurant required very early mornings, frequently battling a couple of hours sleep and a hangover, and greeting the first customer promptly at 6:00 a.m., waiting at the door in the snow, a regular who ordered the same thing every morning with a side of "limp bacon". 

That's why, when I came across an article on NPR on four foreign language words that have no exact English translation, I was immediately drawn to the word "soubhiyé".

In Lebanese Arabic (of which I am 50 percent), soubhiyé refers to that period of time in the morning when no one else is awake but you, and you can either have some quiet time to yourself before the household is awake, or you can invite a friend or neighbor to join you for coffee and tea and you have some catch-up time together before the day get started. 

I get up early to make breakfast and school lunches for the kids. But even if I didn't have this quotidian chore, it is likely I would still get up early. I am drawn to the quiet of that time of day, a period to gather oneself and mentally prepare for what lies ahead. I can't imagine the  converse, and days when I overslept and thrown into the demands of the day almost never go as smoothly or end well. 

As such, I don't think I would ever invite a friend over before the rest of the house is awake, but when Elise is also up during soubhiyé, it gives us an opportunity to catch up, share our dreams from the night before -- some good, some bad -- and talk about what we have going on that day. 

Our lives sometimes feel frantic and Colombo feels like the inside of a hornets' nest. I have to remember in a few months we'll move to a city of 20 million, the most populous in the Arab world and one of the largest metropolitan areas on the globe. Colombo seems loud and makes us yearn for quiet. I've heard Maadi, a neighborhood of Cairo where the school is located and where we hope to live, is a calm oasis amid the chaos of Cairo, but all things being relative, Maadi is likely much busier and much louder than Colombo. I take that for granted sometimes. But at least we would be returning to a part of the world where soubhiyé is not unfamiliar. 

Older Kids with Smaller Faces

This spring, ever since returning from winter break in Spokane, has been a blur. As Elise prepares for her upcoming show and trains for the half-Ironman in Vietnam, and we try to keep up with the active schedules of three engaged students, the mantras "one day at a time" and "divide and conquer" have never held more relevance. 

We finally had to take a break and drove south to one of our favorite beaches for some much needed recuperation. For hours, Peter rolled in the shallow surf, literally letting the ocean wash him of the stresses of school summatives. It was like he put himself in a rock tumbler, pockets and hair full of sand and shells. There was no question as to whether he needed the break. 

Sam fished while Peter, Clementine, and I snorkled. When we bought the masks and snorkels at Decathlon, a French sporting goods chain that pulled out of Sri Lanka during the economic crisis, we had trouble finding masks that fit. Some of them were even labeled for, "Older Kids with Smaller Faces," as though acknowledging the fit wouldn't be perfect unless your face grew at a different rate than the rest of your body.  

Spring

The flowers in the trees in the park are blooming. The petals of the pink tabebuia drift gently toward the ground, puddling in the short grass around the trunk, and the flowers of the yellow chain tree hang like bunches of grapes. Sometimes, it's difficult to see the light-colored stems, and the yellow petals appear as though suspended in mid air, golden motes or drops of honey. Spring has come to Sri Lanka.

Ever since suffering my fourth bicycle accident in Colombo, I've started walking to work, trading my 10-minute ride for the 40-minute walk. I'm not a gambler, so I didn't want to push my luck. Especially after the third accident in three weeks miraculously spared my bike serious damage. My wife and work colleagues are appreciative of my new mode of commuting, and I'm learning to embrace it. Even if it does add 30 minutes to my morning journey. It's the only time all day someone isn't asking me for something. 

The straightest line between our home and the office passes diagonally through the largest park in Colombo. Inside, you can barely hear the incessant honking of horns or sputter of tuk-tuks. Those noises are traded for the whisper of a morning breeze in the trees and birdsong, a chattering flock of parrots gliding to perch on a branch overhead. There are worse ways to get to work. Such as driving and spending long frustrating minutes trapped in coagulating traffic. 

I pass familiar landmarks and a usual cast of characters. A Tamil Hindu restroom attendant with slightly bulging eyeballs greets me every morning. A man in long Adidas shorts and a ponytail walks backwards. A dozen middle aged men walking not insubstantial rice and curry bellies relinquish themselves to antiquated exercise machines more akin to devices of torture than not. They swing arms and legs wildly, twist torsos, and fling necks and heads akimbo. 

A fleet of ice cream carts lie in wait nearby, a half dozen chained together. If I am running late, the first of the ice cream men has arrived and is waking up his sleeping cart, dragging the chain from around the bicycle carts, freeing them. There is a clear plastic shower cap wrapped around one of the bicycle seats, held in place with twine, and he removes that, too, as he slides ice cream cones from a box; it's hard to tell which is more cardboard, the cones or the box.

One day last week, one of the fountains was one, spewing water high into the air. A band of crows lined the concrete lip of the fountain, taking turns testing the water. They bathed themselves, flapping their black feathers to wash their wings, but, to me, it distinctly looked like they were playing, hopping into and out of the water, dancing around it, like Clementine and her friends do at the pool. 

A friend had once told me you can read the prosperity of a country by whether or not the fountains work. This was the first time I'd seen a fountain work in Sri Lanka, and they have many. I haven't seen the fountain work since, but perhaps this is a promising omen of things to come. 

I'd say the days are warming but -- despite having the most pleasant winter we've had a four years -- they've always been warm. As our time in Sri Lanka draws to a close it's difficult not to pay special attention small wonders, as we -- at the same time -- curse the daily moan of bass emanating from the house next door, U2 played at ear-splitting volumes, or the maneuvers of drivers too distracted by tax hikes and austerity measures forced upon them by the government and the IMF to care about clipping pedestrians with their side view mirrors. 

We have a love-hate relationship with the island country right now. Three months until we either leave enthusiastically or are dragged, kicking and screaming.  Likely, a combination of the two. 

Week Without Walls, Clementine

A few weeks after the boys' trips, Clementine got to do her own WWW. She also went to Kitugala, like Sam, with her class and was able to regale us with tales of her own canyoning adventure and kayaking. 

She was away for two nights, the longest she had been away from home, and on the first night she called at 9, right before Elise and I were to turn the lights off for the evening, crying and home sick. Like the trooper she us, she collected herself; the call the second evening was much less frantic.

Dance to "Scars to Your Beautiful"