Bits recoil

February 11th, 2012. New volunteers come, the promise of more arriving in sandy darkness. Daisy, with a British accent that conjures images of Oliver Twist, speaks in self conscious tones and has not processed, yet. These people are impermanent, and in forgetting names and faces and kurtas picked and coffees ordered I retain my solidity. They lug pink and blue and black suitcases and unpack and then pack again, some with profound statements that define their time, others with desire to come again, a few bring tears around a wobbly wooden table. I watch the wonder, document hostility, misunderstanding, acceptance too, from my place on the tan couch under a thin orange blanket. 
I watch the changes of love in Anna Karenina. The passion and lust turned through gestures of delicate white hands and building of hospitals and children deserted into something both greater, and some things lost.
I see the changes of love in myself too. My patients as dear as Tanzanian children, their facial features imprinted. I prick sanitized hands, scoop drops of blood as they wince and I comfort in little Hindi phrases as my gloved hands rub theirs. Some healthy, others near death, the little numbers in strict language tell me, and I write notes starred by metallic pens.
This one cannot speak, this one, crippled by a train accident years ago who loves green parrots and looking out the back door at the cows grazing in the fields, this one responsive, this one grinds her teeth when she sits, a byproduct of her medicine, this one can stand, do exercise. This one likes pink nail polish, the peachy colored one, not the magenta. 
I know them all, names found through medical exams, and my arrival in the morning is not a surprise. I am family, too.
The longer I am away from home, the harder to return, I think. 
The longer away, the more I find about the reasons I left.
Dreams plague my sleep still, and waking, I try to resolve and forgive and forget and pretend like my family is the one found behind bars at a home for the destitute, shaded by full trees carrying unripe oranges.
I have run from my home, the windows glowing with afternoon light, orchids blooming and dog sleeping at my feet under the spell of chasing squirrels in her dreams. 
I ran from anger, from the passive, from aggression, from my judgements and fear and silence and from those I thought did not see the chasm opened by changing names and changing apartments and changed love.
Tolstoy understood the love that is not as simple as any book or movie or phrase one can quote and write for moments of sorrow and weeks of solitude. The painful metamorphosis of children and parents and growing up and growing older and realizing when change is fruitless in another, can destroy.
Destroy bonds created in riding lessons and watching timeless movies under soft sheets and over cups and cups of coffee and shared addictions and secrets told over a dorm phone's spotty connection when no one else would listen.
I am too tired to run, exhausted to lie, unwilling to destroy bonds and connections with those that I love most.
Love is frustrating and passive and aggressive and territorial and conditional. Somehow, though, I think the opposite is true too.
Love is willing to change, requires change, be it through boxes of toys discarded or shoes collected at the base of the stairs, and this, I think I now understand. 
Love oversteps boundaries and forces tears and names called and actions regretted and keys taken and doors slammed while the dog cowers under a glass table, and judgement brought, thought too, Skype conversations turned into pixeled anger and silence, inspires nightmares of desertion and hope and then hope destroyed and hope rebuilt again.
Plastic surgery and judgement about smoking and cigarettes and clothing cannot compete with shared music loud in a car's speakers.
Love brings forgiveness, apologies, from both, in roundabout ways when one or another cannot say the words except only to hope for peace without having to ask. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have judged you, too hard to say. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have called you that, unthinkable. 
India has taught me my fragility, my dependance, my immaturity, my wish for words when none come to my grasping hand, my willingness for change. 
I do not think that my family will heal whole again, that I will build a storybook life where my fractures and theirs are healed, that my parents will rekindle lost affection.
Leaving those, who have guided me through epic novels and French textbooks and soccer cleats, has changed us. But thirteen hour flights to foreign lands has also rebuilt hope in myself, in my parents, that cannot be destroyed. 
Leaving has brought an apology, if at least not to my lips, to my fingers.