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.

Sometimes

Sometimes i am so angry at the unrealised cruelty of human beings and of friends. Of how we hurt one another so easily and move away so quickly. Of how little we realise the damage we inflict on those who have made themselves vulnerable to us (even without intending to) and how often when we do finally realise it, we do nothing. It's too hard, or complicated, and we don't bother.
and then our failure to reach back, to lift back up the soul we crushed... it makes me mad. becase they just have to lie there in their hurt, alone. And then the pharasees come by, and the saducees. the people who judge and look and scorn and also do not stop to help, because it's too messy. and there is not always a good samaratin, and sometimes the good samaratin is too late, and our friend has withered up and died.
i want to hurt the people who hurt, and chase down the people who walk away. i want to clobber into their thick heads some sense of what they do, and how much better they could do. how much better and greater a person they could be. because they're not bad people. they just aren't big enough, or willing to stretch far enough (because granted, it hurts and its scary and you don't know what you'll end up looking like).
and the fact is... even when the good samaratin does come, and they look after the wounds... i don't know if the wounded will never forget that pain, or who gave it to them and then walked away without coming back. and their blood is still lying on that road, and who's going to walk back and clean it up? And who would meet them there if they did?
i don't know. those who go back... i don't know how often they are met there...or how often they just go and stand in the ruin of it all and cry alone. mourn alone.
i despise people who are so caught up in their own world that they don't see the worlds of others which they contain, and ought to keep a watch-care over.
i despise the people who hurt my friends, and don't do anything about it. but i cannot walk away from them myself, or i will be the same.

The Southern Cross

Well, I'm back. I went home, and do you know?

It really was home.

I found that poem I mentioned a few posts earlier, that I'd been looking for. I think it's really funny; not the poem, but that it's about the Southern Cross, and wishing I could go there tomorrow. Because, well, I did.

I'd forgotten you could see it from Bonaire, and was just thinking of seeing it in Uganda when I wrote the poem... and when I did see it in Uganda, I guess that's why it seemed so familiar to me, because I did know it already. And going back was so unexpected; just a one day decision with a ticket the next day!

Anyways. I thought I'd post it here now.

Meet me under the Southern Cross,
Just now a distant
Memory
Hovering over my consciousness
In silent celestial garb.

Meet me under the Southern Cross,
Where once our paths
Entwined
Pulling our hearts together before
Sending us off into time.

Meet me under the Southern Cross,
So deeply south,
So terribly high,
So achingly long from now.

Meet me under the Southern Cross,
I’d be there tomorrow
If only I
Could.

Poem...

A poem I wrote Saturday afternoon, for fun. The correct formatting doesn't show up on here, but oh well.

Dutch
I counted once the
language books
hiding in my home.
Serbo-Croat chatting
with Latin I and II.
The English-French taunting
its two counterpart-textbooks
(they being only level one, and
sadly, badly beaten).
My proud Slovensko-Anglicky slovink
(squat and robust like a banker) next to
One Kyrgyz feeling small and out of place and
One kimchi-dreaming Korean.
Nine ruling Russians watch
From their balconies across my walls,
Being four more than the
Sulky English sitting next to
Three Swahili soldiers.
We won’t count the Bibles,
with their two languages more, and
We’ll overlook the zoo—
(a delightful dictionary of foreign terms).
We won’t even count my dushi Papiamento
in exile far away.
And though I missed a
couple phrasebooks, I’ll
quote the tally now:
That’s twenty-five language books
hiding in my house.
Twenty-five languages! And not
one of them the
first in which I wrote.

Rain

I love the rain, the sound of it falling through the leaves, on the rooftops, into puddles. I love rain on a tin roof, loud and obnoxious and musical all at once. I love the way rain splatters. I love the way it cleanses; washes away.

When I can I walk in the rain. When I need to I run in the rain. When no one is looking I dance in it, and let the rain drops carry me away.

I hope it rains one day while I'm home. I want to watch it fall on the banana leaves again, and see the red dirt I was born on swell up into muddy rivets running along the street and turning my backyard into a rich mud-bath. I want to gaze at the sea before me once more when the waves are grey with tiny white caps, and the sky is but a shade lighter, and a seagull with its feathers earily glowing white swoops down over the scene. Somehow that has always been my definition for peace, even though it was in the middle of a rainstorm.

A poem I wrote several months back keeps flitting across my mind today. That happens sometimes. But I can't find it; I think I put it on a different computer or drive than I have here just now. It's the rythmm of it that has me, I think.

It has me thinking and remembering and wondering again, which I have not because it has been too tiring for some time now.

I dream every night now of being back there, of being home. And I wake crying almost every time. In seven days I'll be back there at last, and I won't have to dream again. So it makes me wonder... what will waking up be like?

Rain wash us bright again.

Excited...

I just want to take a few minutes to say I'm so excited to be going home in 8 days!!! First time back to the Caribbean in 12 years... :)

Windows

I have decided that windows make every bit of difference.
My office has been moved from a little room in the middle of a basement to a room at the edge of a basement... with two windows. And having the sun pour onto me and being able to watch a beautiful sunset out my window at the end of the day is just lovely.

It makes me really excited about my travels coming up: I decided instead of sticking around and not travelling, I would go somewhere... And after great debate as to the where (the debate being...visit dear Riv in Scotland, Go-Eders in Uganda, or Bee in the Middle East), I decided that what I actually needed was to go home. To my birthplace.

So in 29 days I will be back in the Caribbean, watching the sun set to a green flash on one side of the island, and the moon rise over the rough waves on the other side. And I can't wait. Still, every time now that things get overwhelming, or I am just so exhausted, or frustrated, or down, I take out the thought of where I will soon be, hold it out at arms length, dust it off, turn it around a bit in admiration, and then set it back in anticipation.

In 29 days, I'll be swimming in 80 degree, crystal clear water and walking with flamingos and eating pastechi.

It's a window into the future, and a window into a past that was locked up.
I think that's something to be excited about.