Faux Fur and Feelings...

The smoky smell of kerosene lingers at the top of the stairs.  If memories attach as strongly to scents as they say, it’s no wonder that the short climb from downstairs to up leads me to winters in Albania fourteen years back.  Brief stints in Romania waft there, too, visions of red tile roofs and lye-dipped concrete mix with friends and laughter and mud, onion-based soups and potatoes.

It’s cold in northern Virginia.  Not Alaska cold or Norway cold – it’s not even Michigan cold, but I live in a house that will soon celebrate a century and the air outside is accustomed to creeping in the edges of windows and doors.  The heater is a tad asthmatic, and so a glowing flame of kerosene fills in the gaps until it breathes again.  Bits of skin left bare by slippers and socks, blankets and the sort of nubbly shapeless sweaters adored at home but never worn in public lean in its direction like sunflowers toward the sun in late afternoon.  Fingers reach easily, but my nose is held prisoner by posture, bumping against chilled walls unseen whenever I turn my head.  Every now and then it must be thawed by leaning in to the kerosene sun and breathing deep.  Aaaah… Albania again.

Two winters I spent there, devoid of central heating and running water after 11:00 pm.  Hand-made blankets, knitted by loving hands unknown and donated to the orphans with whom I lived, hung heavily from nails pounded into the corners of my doorways.  I slept in hat and gloves, three layers of pajamas and the ugliest faux cow fur coat someone’s well-intentioned grandmother gave me.  The hood was soft and lined, though, and dreams care little for fashion, so like a gypsy queen I settled my cattle-colored self under swaths of blankets every night, breathing in kerosene fumes till the tender warmth of sleep’s cradle rocked me out cold.

If I close my eyes, my senses – the smell of kerosene, the whispered shudder of dancing flames - tell me that I’m somewhere in Eastern Europe.  As much as I might want to believe it, however, my passport bears no new stamps since May (clearly, a travesty), and the cars outside my window whiz past with license plates from Virginia, Maryland and DC.  The reality suggested by my feelings exists only in my head.  A literal reality denies the one I feel – I type these words from Virginia, not Albania.  It’s 12:00 am and I need only to turn on my faucet for confirmation.

As I consider the Big Questions of life – Where Did I Come From?  Is There a God?  If so, What is He/She/It Like? Where am I Going? How Should I Live? – it’s very tempting to base my answers on my senses.  It feels true that what I feel must be true, even if what feels true to me contradicts what feels true to you. 

With eyes closed and the scent of kerosene clouding my internal GPS, it feels like I should be getting ready to tell my sweet orphans a bedtime story, tangling my tongue around their ancient language, then kissing their foreheads and tucking them tight in their beds.  But, Facebook and experience tell me that they are grown.  They have children of their own now - I’ve seen photos and met them myself.  The objective truth is, it’s 2012 and I’ve called this hundred-year-old house outside of DC my home for more than two years.  They speak English (mostly) outside these walls and no matter what European dream my mind chases, my feet still walk thick black Virginia pavement.  The truth is undeniable.

The reason I ask the Big Questions to begin with is because I know somewhere, something is true.  Objectively true.  Legitimately true.  True whether I know it, believe it, accept it or not.  I will not console myself with feelings as warm and fuzzy as my favorite shapeless sweater, placating my curiosity with the idea that whatever I want to be true is true.  That makes no sense and is the catchphrase of fools.  Where am I sitting?  There is an answer, and it is NOT Albania. 

Accepting the idea of one actual reality is the first step in finding substantial answers to my questions.  If no answer exists, there’s no point in asking the questions in the first place – it’s an exercise in futility.  If I just follow my nose to whatever I think is true, the direction changes every time I turn my head, and my journey to enlightenment becomes nothing but a series of random rest stops on the way to nowhere.  As interesting as rest stops can be, there’s more to life than toilets and fast food (which, ironically, create a fairly co-dependent cycle).

The truth is, I live on a plot of land commonly regarded as the State of Virginia.  There are longitudes and latitudes, Google maps and satellite photos to confirm my location.   Albania, Romania and the ones I love who live there are located half a world away, and although I might be with them in spirit, talk to them on Skype, or reminisce our days together in my mind, too many miles lie between us to hug.  No lingering kerosene cloud can erase that fact.  If my location is defined by a literal truth in relation to their location (as well as a literal un-truth – I cannot truthfully say we are hugging if we are not), other realities in life must, therefore, be defined by literal truths and literal un-truths.  No matter how I feel when I smell them. 

"We cannot escape the reality of what is, no matter what we say we believe or think."      -Francis Schaeffer