Defining home

I am writing from my best friend's apartment in Abilene, Texas. I've been here now since late on Saturday night. Since I've been back in Texas, I've seen several people and we've remarked about the surrealistic experience it has been. Firstly, I wonder if it's common only to me, or to the physical, emotional or spiritual nomad in general to find multiple affinities? To unpack that a little so it doesn't sound quite so annoying would be to ask whether everyone has multiple homes?

There's an obvious element to that; in the fact that most people have several life compartments that are unique to them, that come to form their full image of self. A quick Google search on multiple home lives will bring up several blogs about "Multiple me", "Multiple online lives" and general nods at our duplicity. Moms blog about their kids, about going back to school, technology buffs discuss the latest Linux platforms, etcetera, etcetera. So, it is a pretty well established concept that people exist in several arenas.

What happens when it is more than just an element to life, but rather life itself? I am really hoping not just to talk at it, but to learn something by asking this question of the abyss. I know that I have several areas of my life that are simply spaces in which I exist, but then I have these places that come to define me. I used the term duplicity earlier because I am, at the moment really interested in the potential disconnection between those defining spaces.

One of the lives or the homes that I'm talking about could be where most people have more than one group of friends, and those, along with work colleagues, church members and neighbours to name a few, make up their multiple self. I guess one of my questions is whether you find yourself either having several unrelated life subgroups or if you try to blend groups. Which one is more comfortable? The compartmentalised self that exists fairly independently of the image in a different compartment, or the de-compartmentalised self that attempts to maintain a general frame while augmenting the elements of you that help particular subgroups relate more - or less - to you?

For example, if you're an academic, do you discuss interesting new research with everyone in your life or do you talk about sports, or the fact that Oprah is ending? If you are an equal opportunity socialiser, are you as (insert racial description here) with one group as you are with another? If you're religious, do you infuse that across all your environments?

I am a person in pursuit and deeply desirous of a genuine existence. That being said, I have no assertion for you on whether it is good or bad to maintain separation or attempt to blend lifestyles. The only thing I might say is that perhaps there are situations where one is more appropriate. I think that perhaps my definition of home is a place where I am received favourably by my environment while successfully and honestly communicating an element of me.

Come fly with me!

This is definitely not a real entry. This is the twinkle in the eyes of a mummy and daddy entry. I am just HOURS away from boarding a plane from Port of Spain, to Miami, to Dallas/Ft. Worth. I could not be more excited. The funny thing is though, a week ago, I wasn't going anywhere for a while.

This week I had a very big interview for what could quite possibly be the most God orchestrated first job a girl could imagine. I have been on a winding road to my career, and currently see myself as an educated fledgling. I decided that until I knew which direction I would go geographically, I wouldn't do any recreational travel. When I left Abilene, Texas it was with the assurance that I'd see my best friend, I'd see my ex boss and his wife soon. Circumstance would have it that both their travel plans got cancelled, and I was suddenly, for the first time in seven years, grounded.

It easily took months for me to come to terms with the idea of a re-Trinidadian life, and one in which I was not just another Trinidadian, but had an "otherness". In most settings this difference is positive, but when one expects to be received as a member, but instead is greeted as a guest it can be difficult. Anyway, the idea behind that tangent was that I missed the home I'd made in Texas. My beautiful, beautiful friends and family. I realised that even though now I'm with some of the family I'd missed while away all those years, now I had accumulated family on the other side of the missing. :)

In comes the prospect of a job and one year until my next vacation opportunity, and out goes Jane, to purchase a ticket to her loved ones.

I'm COMING!

Death is a reason to live

Do you make New Year's resolutions? I usually make resolutionesque decisions or mission statements around the turn of a year. Sometimes it's the turn of my years and I'm celebrating (read: agonising over) a birthday, or it's along with everyone else at the New Year. This year, my theme was "It's time to admit to your dreams" and I really felt a lot of affinity for the idea. How many people actually run after their dreams? I think that the answer to that is also the reason why people are so riveted by stories like Henry Ford's, Alek Wek's and Ted Jobs'. Not that many people. It seems to be far more remarkable to be too busy just trying to get by to think about vain things like your hopes and dreams.

This year though, about three people in my life very suddenly passed away. Now, before you call me up with condolences, let me explain. None of these people were very close to me, but they were still very present family or friends that I had known most or all of my life. Heart attack, cancer, a viral infection. One of those things took the life of forty-something year olds, leaving a shocked mass of loved ones in their wake.

As I sat in the funeral of one of the diceased family friends and his father sat quietly in the row ahead of me I wondered if his son had seen Paris and stood on the Eiffel tower; I pondered whether he had loved so strongly that it made him cry; if he had painted his bathroom purple (if that was something he'd wanted to do). I looked around at his bereft friends and wondered if they felt they could have said "I love you" just one more time. If I hadn't done it before then, I vowed to see and do all those things I wanted to. I don't want to realise that I'm dying and I haven't told those beautiful, amazing people that I love them, that my life is so much better because they walked in it. I will fight hard to be everything I can be to everyone in my life.

Imagine coming to the end of your life, wasted, weary, blissfully spent because you opened your heart to others, you burst the banks of your spirit in the pursuit of God, you wore your knees out walking around the world and you lived.

Imagine that.

Repatriation

This post is my very first attempt at blogging, which is interesting because I don't know if I've ever considered myself the blogging type. Anyway, I have spent a vast amount of time away from my normal social luxuries, and thought that this was a good way to balance my compulsive musing with my love of community.


Responses will always be appreciated.

So to get into the title of this post, I want to give a little preface. This title is mostly inspired by my best friend's sister who is returning to the States after spending - what? - two+ years in Uganda. The issue is not so much where she was, but the fact that she was "elsewhere." To personalise the story, I have recently moved back to my childhood home in Glencoe, Trinidad and Tobago. I have spent the last seven years in residence at different interesting nooks around the world. My first stop was the very small, homogeneous Isle of Wight, UK; next was the very large, cosmopolitan London, UK followed by Abilene, Texas. I was in Abilene the shortest time of these three, but it definitely did the most "damage". Perhaps a different post will tell the story of why I moved from England to the States, but this post is about coming home.

My travels have left their marks on me. For example, I now sound like I grew up on a plank of wood that floated from Trinidad to England to Texas. I deluded myself for the first few years of travel that I sounded different because my language had changed - I used colloquialisms from my current destination and that is what made me seem "foreign". It is only now that I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that I do have an accent that sounds a little British, a little American and kind of Trinidadian. Grrrh. This is probably the most obvious feature of my time away that someone might be able to notice. The things that no one can really tell are the most interesting though.

My perspective on life will never be the same again. I am broken by the idea that my life could ever exist solely in one country again. At 26, I have spent significant amounts of time in 5 countries and with every long term reside I have accumulated loves and habits and homes. The interesting (if you want to call it that) thing is that when I returned "home" to Trinidad, I noticed every negative aspect of my "life" here, and in reality it was more of the shell of a life than a whole life. In my Texas life I had a stable friend base, I had my nice, neat apartment, my own cooking and workout routine and church with my Bestie, including young professionals' Sunday school.  When I returned to the home I left, what I remembered was not what I encountered. Even when you understand that life goes on without you, that your friends marry or get high responsibility jobs or move away, you still are not prepared. It is amazingly difficult to prepare for the feelings of guilt that creep across your mind - why isn't it just straightforward and easy to live in the home I grew up in?

The one thing that I think you can't get enough preparation for is the idea that you are no longer like everyone else you knew in your home country. You're not even like your sister or your brother. You are now a Trinidadian, an American, a Whereverian who lived in place or places X and now you are one of those multinationals. Your life will never be contained in the location of your origin, because I guarantee that you would have found some new origins in the places you stayed. When you go to Walmart, you will look at the as seen on TV section near the checkout and think of how absolutely vain that is when you saw a half naked little boy happy to touch your hair because it was so silky. You will look around while out with friends at Chilis and think "What are we all doing to matter, to help?"

It is okay.

As a praying lady, I believe that God is with us. What that means for the people driven to live in other countries (and I do think this lifestyle takes a particular breed) is that God is not surprised or ignorant of the urgings of our hearts. Emmanuel (God is with us). As a person going through the stages of resettlement, I want to say that you are not alone in your feelings. It is a great experience to live in another country. When you have the absolute treat of finding a home in that "other", it means that your origins will have a slightly different fit. I want to tell you to trust God to keep on guiding you to the place where your heart urgings meet His will.

Love,
J