Redefining Home and Time

One of my readers recently asked me to elaborate on how come Bonaire was home, and how I knew it so definitly. I'd forgotten that I never did come back and write more about it; there was just so much work waiting for me when I got back to the States, and then I got ill, etc. But he's right: I should elaborate.

I knew that going back would be hard, and certainly emotional. And knowing myself, I figured I would probably start crying about the time we spotted the island coming into view through the windows of the plane. Well, I did cry when I saw that sight... but I actually started crying as we went to board the plane in the first place. I couldn't believe we were really doing it. And then when we touched down on Bonaire, I didn't want to get off the plane, because I was just so afraid of what I'd find outside.

But then I did step outside, and the wind caught me up in a bouquette of scents: of salt, curry & spice, and of red earth and mangroves. And I heard the crashing of the waves and the baying of donkeys and saw the windows where I used to stand welcoming others back, and where I was welcomed back so many times in the past. And while there was no person waiting and waving there now, the whole island just reached out in welcome.

There were lots of changes, some that I had considered and some that I had not even thought of beforehand. I knew my favourite restaurant was demolished in a hurricane. I knew my favourite beach met that same fate. I hadn't really thought about things like seeing bilboards and signs for mobile-phones and internet services around. We really had neither before leaving the island... most all of that has come since. But while it was a change... it was natural. I think if I had found everything the same, I would have been slightly disturbed about it all. It was nice knowing, too, that my personal changes weren't the only ones that had been made, and that where the island exactly as I left it at 12 years old would no longer be able to hold me or even have a place for me... the island that it has become might.

I know that Slovakia is home to me. That is no longer a question. But it is a home that I have worked very, very hard to make and that has broken my heart time and time again in the process. Bonaire... simply is home. I don't and I didn't have to make it that way. It cannot be anything else to me. Its where I was born. Its where I played, and dreamed, and first went to school, first walked, talked, read, and wrote. Its where I first lost. It really is my past... and we carry our pasts with us, and I can see that now. I don't know where we (or I?) got the idea that the past is so separate from us--it lives inside us!

I got to see my old schools, and my house. The studio and transmitter site where my dad worked and I proudly helped him. I got to see my fellowship building, where I would ride my bike and apply band-aids to those who fell on the concrete and had vacation bible school and sunday school and got my first NIV Bible in 3rd grade and...

I got to see friends. People I knew who were still there. People who I remembered, who were like family to me, and people who I did not remember--but they remembered my family. When I went scuba diving, I became "the dutch girl who was born here and came back after 12 years." When my sister and I went for icecream on the north end of the island, we went to a shop that was owned by a man my dad used to work with, and he remembered my dad and so remembered and greeted us... and in the middle of talking about something, when he learnt I was actually even born there, he just stopped, put his hands on the counter, looked me straight in the eye and said "Welcome home."

I didn't have to do anything at all. I just had to go back and find it. And I am pretty sure now that it will always be home like that. Because if it couldn't be taken away yet, than maybe it can never. Or maybe home is just someplace that remembers you, too. Maybe that's what makes home--not just that you love and remember it, but that it loves and remembers you, somewhere and somehow. Or maybe its just shared history, that can be bloody and painful and teary, or happy and rosy and perfect--but shared, nevertheless. Same background. Same sort of stories. Shared stories. same schools and education, same first languages. same...

I found that some of the way I write is Caribbean. I cannot describe how wonderful it was to me, to learn that something I hold so precious is from there. I carry it with me in the most important and meaningful way. I'm still a part of it.

One of the biggest changes that I have noticed in myself since leaving there and coming again to the States was that it changed the way I look at time. Since I first left there, I've had such a hard time with, well, time. Two years was an eternity--i couldn't think that far, couldn't come close to commiting to something for that long. For me, 4 months was more than long enough for anything. My sister had to remind me at one point that 2 years is considered "short term missions." I always thought it was just because I was used to moving around fairly frequently, even when it was just from house to house. But now, I don't think like that... now I can actually handle the idea of 2 years, and I can see how it can be short. And i think it's because I can measure it differently now.

I was measuring time by how long since I had left bonaire. Every year I would somberly mark the date of anniversary of depature, and every year I had still not gotten back. And now I have. So instead of it being forever... and thinking i'll never get to go back, ever... Now I know I did, and I know that it took 12 years to do so, but I did it. So 12 years now is no longer this part of a vast emptiness for me; it's a completed cycle. I went back. 12 years is no longer forever. And if 12 years is no longer forever, than 2 years is not forever, either.

Maybe in a few more years, I'll go back again.