Memorial Day weekend (how stupid a phrase is that?) is half way over. Only one more day to be the only people not doing anything. I slept very late this morning and a grumpy H just brought the kids to the pool. I am still finishing my morning coffee, and trying to gear myself up to eat breakfast (vanilla yogurt with Fiber One). There is a hornet trying to break through the window back to the outside. He must have flown in while the girls played on the patio earlier this morning.
Looking back over photos is a surreal experience. I recognize my face but it is an awkward reunion. I am not longer that person. It is a bit like experiencing a little death. You look, and you know that this young girl with the shaved head no longer exists anywhere. She is gone forever. With her, I felt a flush of shame and embarrassment of what used to be. I did not wish her back to life. But the pictures of Mexico filled me with an intense longing. There was Umberto so little even at over a year. He was our only child, pampered and loved and adored. There was Mexico so beautiful and old. There were the coffee shops, the lovely parks, the friends we made. I wanted to go back to that life. I want to go back to Mexico.
And how true that you can never go back to the past. Even if we could move back to Mexico right now, we do not want to raise the children in the D. F. Nor would it be the same with three instead of one. We would not likely be able to recapture those relaxing moment in cafes with our three little monsters. But I looked over those pictures, and realized how much I love Mexico, and how much I feel as if it is my real home. I am homesick for a place that is really not mine to call home.
I started cleaning yesterday. More like mucking out really. I do this about four times a year, and still have mounds of things to toss or give away. I suspect it is not much that we keep getting more things but that it's hard for us to let go of things so we have to do it slowly. Yesterday I put away about five loads of laundry that have been sitting on our bedroom floor. I did new laundry, and started the first of many loads of dishes in the dishwasher. I also took all my photos of albums and threw out the albums (we're switching to photo boxes). Of course I had to look at all the photos.
And how true that you can never go back to the past. Even if we could move back to Mexico right now, we do not want to raise the children in the D. F. Nor would it be the same with three instead of one. We would not likely be able to recapture those relaxing moment in cafes with our three little monsters. But I looked over those pictures, and realized how much I love Mexico, and how much I feel as if it is my real home. I am homesick for a place that is really not mine to call home.
And who knows what else lays in store for me as I start the odious project of cleaning out our apartment. What other longings lay in wait for me?
2 comments:
I think I know how you feel about feeling a longing for a place you once lived. I think it makes perfect sense for you to long for Mexico, even if, in some sense, it isn't your home.
I often feel a longing for home, but in my case I have no idea where that place is. Once it was Portland, but I visited there over Christmas, and while it was fun and special, it's not at all my home. My brother and his fiance now live there, after years in Boston, and it is amazing to see him really returning home, living at home, being happy in his home town (he, unlike me, was born there). I could never do that. I have no desire to return to Portland, or Boston, or Ohio, or anywhere in particular. I like where I am now a lot, but it's not a real home, a place with roots. This is fine, since I'm not sure that I want that right now anyway. I think a lot of this comes from moving 4 times in 6 years, and a lot comes from having no idea where I'll end up getting a job.
I still get homesick, sort of. I long sometimes just for the ocean, or for a small patch of woods deep behind my Father's house, and for a little while, I feel deeply, profoundly homesick. Not sick for a particular place, really, but just for the very having of a home.
Thank you Matt for such a beautiful comment. I, too, feel so strange about the notion of home. We moved so much when I was young that I feel disconnetedfrom the notion of home. Yet, Mexico was such a happy place for me. I felt...at home...much to my suprise.
And I too miss the ocean. We have lovely beaches here but the ocean, it's just not the same.
And roots...such a hard thing for me to even think about. I think that my little family has become something like roots for me.
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