“I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.”
—Beryl Markham in West With the Night
I'm thinking about the fact that I am from a beautiful place with turquoise seas, and now I live in a concrete city, and call it home. For the first time in the decades since I left my birth country at age 18, to attend college in New York City, I have begun to wonder what my life might have been like had I never left that sparkling blue place, or if I had returned. It is too late now. This is the place where I made a life with the man I love. Our children were born in our adopted land and this is where their yesteryears are buried deep. To "go home" now would be to leave them behind, and I have no desire to do that. Perhaps, in the end, home is not a place at all, but rather, it is the people you love best, and with whom you choose to share your days. Still, look at that clear blue water. It helps to remember that no matter how far away from it I travel, by birth, I can still call it mine.
Yes. Oh, so many yeses!
ReplyDeleteMs. Moon, I can tell that home for you is your family. And what a beautiful home it is, too. Hugs.
DeleteI have been having the same thoughts. Perhaps it comes with the time of life when our children are finally launched into a city and a life that is not our own, or wasn't when we were their age.
ReplyDeleteWe returned to the British Virgin Islands for Christmas this past December and felt the pull to return permanently to our little house overlooking the sea, our cashew and sugar apple trees and our old friends and family. It seems natural now that my Mom is no longer in a home and our son is settling in NYC in September. I feel like we're picking up where we left off before we had him.
-invisigal
invisigal, people often ask me why would i ever leave a place as beautiful as the island where i was born. i have never had a good answer. and yet, i always knew i would leave it, ever since i was five and visited my aunt in new york city. this is the first time in all the years i have lived here that i have hankered to "go home." i'm sure it has to do with our kids moving out on their own. and yes, into a life that is not our own. there are so many stages in this parenting journey!
DeleteEvery time I see you or read you Angela, I always think of blue water so thast very interesting to know it's what you came from. (I think that means you carry it with you.)
ReplyDeleteliv, i love that idea, that i carry that turquoise sea inside me! thank you for that!
DeleteWhat a gorgeous place to call your own. And who knows what the future holds? No one knows for sure.
ReplyDeletejenny_o, who knows indeed. i wonder sometimes if life would be easier there. and then i think about my not-yet-born grandchildren. i want to live close to them.
DeleteHome. Like the longing we have for our mothers (if we had a good one), it never goes away. It's primal.
ReplyDeleteBirdie, I have been thinking a lot about my mother, and with it comes this hankering for "home." I think you're on to something.
DeleteI'd go back and make your kids visit. I'm sort of kidding and sort of serious.❤
ReplyDeleteJoanne, i've sort of had the same thought, lol.
DeleteI guess many of us can look at the paths our lives have taken and wonder about what would have happened if we'd chosen another fork. I think this way about Florida -- especially when I'm in the dark depths of a chilly England winter (or previously, a freezing New York one). I keep thinking I may go back some day. Never say never!
ReplyDeleteSteve, maybe these thoughts come at a certain point in life. I like to remember what a friend of mine once said: there are no wrong paths--you take one fork and learn one set of lessons, you take the other and learn another set of lessons, and both sets are equally valuable. Still, i've begun to wonder what lessons the other path might have held. No regrets, just wondering.
DeleteWell, this is all very topical for me.....
ReplyDeleteExpat Mum, you're going home! But you're leaving home to do it! Such a conundrum.
DeleteBeautiful post. I sometimes have similar thoughts. Left Cuba in my mid-20s. Now I call London home and Havana home still. So, I go home from home when I visit and then I return home. :-)
ReplyDeleteGreetings from London.
Hi neighbor! I am from Jamaica, to the south of you, and I know just what you mean about having two homes, and leaving home to go home, and leaving home to return home. I love that you understand this.
DeleteThere are a number of beautiful places I've lived in, and the state of Wisconsin where I grew up and these places do call to me once in a while. Yet my roots are now deep in California and I would not want to move away from my sons who are here too. Your post makes me think of "The Road Not Taken".
ReplyDeleteTerra, you understand it perfectly. In a way, our children are "home." I cannot imagine how much greater this pull will be when there are grandchildren.
DeleteOh, I can so relate to this... leaving a place you Love... sometimes reluctantly... and knowing you can never really 'go back', but must instead move forward and have a Peace about the Journey and where ever it takes you. Blessings from the Arizona Desert... Dawn... The Bohemian
ReplyDeleteDawn, I'm so glad you commented. I hope you come by often. xo
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