Accomplished

Wingbean crawls its steady way up a bamboo trellis behind me, its blue flowers reaching every day a little closer to the blue sky. It's little tendrils stick out here and there like baby curls, looking for something to hold on to, to show the grasping plant where to grow into itself.


Across the potholed dirt road, two children splash around in a neighbor's rice paddy, absolutely screaming with laughter as they try to run in the mud and water--full-bodied joy, total abandon.

The sweet taste of dragonfruit lingers in my mouth, brought out to the field by a smiling wife and mother, close to my age. Her third child, a year old, is tied loosely in front of her. He's learning to greet people, and we practice--Sawatdee Kha, Nong Khen, I say pressing my hands together and bowing my head. Little Khen looks at his mother and she looks back (you know what to do, her eyes say). His baby hands make a big circle and clap in front: SawaaaaadeeKAB! he gleefully pronounces, almost knocking himself over with enthusiasm.


Unyielding sunlight shines on all of this, folding me in warmth, soaking into my soul and my skin. It makes me darker, makes me calmer, makes me thirstier.


Sing-song syllables rise and fall rythmically around me: nung roi, yi-sip-et. nung roi, sam sip. kaaw sip jet. They're numbers. I write them down. In my weekly report, this morning will get all of the light and beauty and laughter boiled out of it--"recorded data for market fern trial." 


Some days I would wonder, "what do these columns of blue ink accomplish?" And that question could consume me, make the wingbean flowers seem ridiculously unimportant, the neighbor's dirty children tragic, the encounter with Khen and his mother a waste of time--a distraction from all the work that I could and probably should be doing. It could make me crazy with a feeling that I should always be doing more for a world that needs so much. But today, at least, I'm happy to sit in the field and record my numbers, absorbing this place with the sunlight, and I'm not so worried about what is accomplished. 
I can't shake the feeling that days like this are important too. Somehow.