The Lone Tie
We came back to Ecuador after five months on a missionary home assignment in the US. It was a time of change for us; our eighteen-year-old went off to college five months ago and our sixteen-year-old graduated from high school during our visit to the US. It was a busy five months, full of church events and family transition.
The van pulled up to our house in Macas, Ecuador after an exhausting eight-hour drive from Quito; we had traveled for thirty-two hours. After a few hours of sleep, I woke and found myself back in the home we have rented for eleven years, wiping dust off shelves, and washing blankets that smelled musty. The first few days were busy with buying groceries with my husband and unpacking suitcases full of clothes. This house is full of memories; we have lived since our boys were little and our ten-year-old came home from the hospital after she was born.
When I went to start some laundry, I remembered all the idiosyncrasies of doing laundry here; back to the washing machine that can take two hours to complete a load due to low water pressure, back to cold water wash and tricks to make the clothes smell clean, adding vinegar and tree tea oil to the washing machine. Back to my gas propane cans that make the drier heat. Back to my washboard where I scrub spots out of clothes and my two clotheslines to hang dry some items. Then I spotted it hanging on the clothesline; so many memories came rushing to me: thoughts of seeing my sons at school with their classmates, thoughts of school assemblies and special events, a bit of nostalgia as I remembered graduation day for my eighteen-year-old and watching the smiles on the faces of his classmates as they walked into their futures.
It was a lone tie; a tie that my eighteen-year-old son had worn with their Monday uniform for school each week, he wore that tie to special events, and he even wore that tie on graduation day, a red tie with a gold stripe that all high school students at his school wore. It hung there with all the memories, waiting for me. My first thought was a bit of a punch in the gut as I thought “he won’t need that tie anymore.”
My husband and I administer a Christian school in the Amazon region of Ecuador and our three children attended the school, now only one goes to school with us each day. I have been so happy to be able to be involved in my children’s school events, to “pop out” of my office for class parties, school assemblies, and chapel services, and sometimes to say “hi”, to be supportive and try not to be a “helicopter” parent as my children have grown.
My two older children no longer go to school with me; they have reached another level of education. I take the tie down carefully and put it in a special place; a place with other memories that make me smile. When I come across it in the future, I will smile and remember.
