winding down.

Two nights ago, I dreamt I was home. I was walking around with Amy in Northwest Portland, shopping, and it was May. I was surprised to find I wasn't happy. I couldn't remember my flight -- I assume my unconscious mind deemed that far too boring dream material -- but I had the distinct feeling that something had gone wrong. "I can't believe it, I'm going to miss my camp," I was telling her, as we walked into a housewares store where I admired flannel sheets printed with quaint winter scenes. "I wasn't supposed to come home for another few months, I just don't know what could have happened." As we walked, I realized I had forgotten to say goodbye to my local friends and my two host families. "I have to go back," I declared at last. "I just left too many loose ends."

We walked into a chocolate shop selling hand-made truffles shaped like cats, which conceivably could exist in the actual neighborhood where my dreaming mind had plopped us down. As I glanced around, I noticed a wall calendar depicting a photo of a city in Moldova. "Why, I just came from there!" I announced, and then proceeded to have one of a very few lengthy and coherent dream conversations in Russian with the Moldovan shop owner, musing over the country's many delights and my time there.

Then the bright spring sunshine woke me up.

***

I have a receipt I saved from one of my "meals" in the weeks before I departed for Moldova, kept to serve as a snapshot of where I was at that time in my life. It lists a large coffee, a nutrition bar, and a single menthol cigarette. (I couldn't buy a whole pack, because then I would be a smoker.)

In my last weeks in the US, I went through my days (daze) with a perpetual knot in my stomach as I bought final needed items (some of which, it turns out, weren't so needed -- anyone looking to buy an almost-new frame pack?) and attempted to see everyone and do everything humanly possible. At night, when I had difficulty falling asleep in the face of the great unknown before me, I started doing a visualization exercise that entailed me running toward the edge of a cliff, leaping off -- and then floating along. Although I've never gone skydiving, from what I hear, all the anxiety and adrenaline experienced while huddling inside the plane, waiting to take the plunge is followed not by a frantic hurtling toward the earth but instead by an unexpected utter calm and silence. Time does not speed up, but rather slows down.

Of the 17 months I've spent in Moldova, from my current vantage point (that of the old, wizened veteran) I think I can say that I've only truly been in Moldova for the last six, and that I'm about to (mentally) depart again. It was only in the past half year that I think I really felt like a resident of my home, neighborhood, and city; that I took for granted the happenings, language, and quirks that I'd chaffed against the prior year. Rather than being always somewhat removed from what was happening around me, I was immersed, not so quick to make comparisons to life back home. Not very quick to think about life back home at all, in fact, because this had become home.

Now, as a grapple with an admittedly positive new stressor, choosing which of graduate program to enter in the fall, I have found that my mental camera from those weeks prior to departure has returned, the camera that recorded all of the otherwise unnotable life events that I suddenly felt the need to save for posterity. Eating greasy burgers out with a girlfriend: click. Going shopping with my mentee: click. Having a good, dark Portland microbrew, eating sushi, my graduation. There were also many moments that should have been noted, but weren't, because in my position at the time I had no way of knowing how great and significant they would seem over the course of the coming two years. Driving my car, visiting the library. Mowing the lawn of the house my friends and I were renting while drinking a PBR and noticing more wiffleball-bat-sized zucchini had materialized under the plant's broad green leaves. Sitting in the front yard talking on my cell phone, as it inexplicably wouldn't work in this home, watching my old and obese cat get a sudden wild impulse and begin tearing madly at the grass before running up into one of the neighbor's stout bushes, perhaps reconnecting to his mighty ancestral roots.

Yes, the camera is back. I have enough time left that it hasn't really begun recording in earnest, but I know that time will soon be here. I am reminded of it nearly every day now, when after a year and a half of desperately seeking (and agreeing to) work in any and all forms, I am having to respond with increasing frequency, "I'm sorry, I'm too busy," or more shocking still, "I'm sorry, I won't be around for that."

***

I have given myself permission to relish the downtime that nearly drove me mad a winter ago, luxuriating in it guilt-free, knowing that it truly is a luxury, and one I won't be enjoying in my coming two years of study, and likely not much in the first few years after that. Having sworn to myself that I would read 100 books during my service, I have made impressive gains toward that goal, and at my current rate might just meet it by the end of March. I bought a Moldovan souvenir flag the other day, and have begun picking up other little knick-knacks when I notice them around town, having learned from the stories of many volunteers who only realized a month to departure that they had spent two years in a country without ever really looking around them, without taking pictures, without seeing what it had to offer. I have 500 digital photos waiting to be printed as soon as I receive my April living allowance, and it doesn't even begin to touch on what remains to be documented.

***

Today, sitting down to read my email at my desk with a cup of coffee, the sun pouring in my window was almost uncomfortably hot. It turned out to be a beautiful day, nearly 60 degrees, blue skies, birds singing, buds on all of the trees, the sound of children playing until sundown in the courtyard beneath my window. Young mothers push strollers along the streets of my neighborhood and old women sell bunches of fragrant white flowers, a symbol here of spring. I have been here long enough, at last, to have seen every season twice over, to appreciate the cyclical nature of it all. I'm looking forward to the reappearance of produce stands just a short walk from my apartment building and have started leaving my window open. I went through all my drawers the other day, pulling out the winter clothes I won't be wearing again, in this country at least. I'm becoming more generous with my possessions, and try to bring some little tidbit with me whenever I visit the children's home where I now work three days a week. A package of candy I was so determined not to eat to quickly that I have had it in my room for six months, little toys I enjoyed seeing on my shelves but know they would enjoy more. Time.

***

Today to the children's home I brought my digital camera and let the kids run wild with it. I've dreamt about them too, now, dreamt about my last visit with them and saying goodbye. It's so unfortunate that I couldn't have been spending the prior year and a half with them, but I'm grateful for the time I do have. Today I made several videos of the kids, interviewing them. For the first, they clowned and preened as if I were filming for an elementary-aged dating service. "Hello, my name is Alina, I'm 12, if you want to call me, my number is...." Later, most of the children had cleared out to go to their weekly karate class, but one, a tomboy who I have to admit a particular fondness for, was dragging her feet, pestering to take just one more picture. I waited in the entry way where all the children's house slippers, shoes and coats are kept as she pulled on her boots. "Okay, I'm taking a video," I told her. "Where are you going?" "I'm going to karate," she answered, "and I love Bridgett very much."