“I am not going to die, I’m going home like a shooting star.” ~ Sojourner Truth.

They say you can’t go home again.  I have always had a problem with that concept, mostly because I have been fortunate to call many places home in my life.  A minister’s family (at least back in the day, who knows what happens now), would be provided with a home when they moved to a new church. The home belonged to the church, not to the minister.  In Jamaica it was called the Manse, and that was the third home I knew once we moved to Jamaica from the UK when I was not yet eight years old.

I have vague memories of the homes before that one, but in my mind’s eye it is the manse in Chapelton, Jamaica that I can still see.  I see the formal verandah overlooking the front yard; the side verandah which was screened in, and overlooked a breadfruit tree and a cane piece that ran all the way down to the road below.  The door out from the kitchen/dining room was all glass, which had been privacy painted.  I remember spending hours, along with my siblings, using a coin to scratch the paint off, probably at my mother’s behest. 

The hardwood boards creaked throughout the house, and at nights you could hear rats scurrying above your head.  Our cats (Saint and Scaredy) had night duty up in the attic to try to rid us of those pests.  We learned to sleep under mosquito nettings slung from a hook in the ceiling, but those rascals could smell ‘foreign’ blood, and found their way in, since of course there were moths which delighted in making holes in the netting.

It was a beautiful old house, though I have no idea how old it was.  In the tropics there are many factors that affect the life expectancy of such houses.  It was replaced by a modern, concrete and breeze block structure seven years after we moved there, one which can withstand hurricanes and insects, and which is still standing. 

When you live your entire life as a migrant, you get confused about where to call home, and begin to feel like the original rolling stone.  Looked at in a positive way, it means that anywhere I find myself is home.  Which is how it should be, if we are all citizens of the world.  Unfortunately, our society has not evolved into that place of acceptance, of seeing all fellow humans as members of one race, regardless of language, skin color, culture. 

In the space of the last few months, as I have been exploring what it means to be retired, I have returned to my love of reading.  I heard it said that a person who reads lives a thousand lives, while a person who does not, lives only one.  I have recently read two classic Indian books, one written over 70 years ago (A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth) and one written a few years ago (The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese).  Both are epic books, not your simple page turners.  The first book is set in the 1950’s, and the second spans generations, from 1900 to 1977.  Both are rich in texture, lyrical works of literature, and are great stories which pull you in and make you believe you have traveled to India.

Behind each story is the fact of English colonization, and all that was wrong with the whole concept of European oppression and domination of the world.  Like in Africa and in the Americas, the white man came, he saw, he liked what he saw, and he took over.  It is almost inconceivable to imagine the arrogance, the greed, the inhumanity that ruled the world from the 15^th century onwards.  How might the course of history have been different if, when those explorers had ventured out, they had not then decided they had the right to claim land not their own? If, when encountering the families who had lived on those lands for centuries they had requested permission to visit, and maybe stay, but not then kill, plunder and place themselves in charge?

One thing that I learned from my early migration experience, was to respect the people into whose homes I was welcomed.  I observed, watched, listened and (probably because I was young) did not try to compare it with the English way, or say, ‘that’s not how we do it in England’.  I imitated, mimicked, tried to blend in as best I could (not easy to do when you are the only white girl in a country school) and made that part of the world my home, even if there is no family home to return to. 

I have recently been spending time in a less developed part of Florida, where the night is full of the sounds of insects, random dogs, occasional vehicles, and very rarely, the siren of a first responder.  In the early morning I have been able to spot birds flitting from tree to tree, sometimes too fast for you to even see their colors. A splash of scarlet amidst the leaves lets you know the cardinals are visiting.  The unmistakable rat-a-tat-tat of Woodie tells you to be on the lookout for the swooping glide of a woodpecker.  I listen to their calls and want to be able to identify each and every one!  But they hide shyly in the foliage above. There are live oak trees, and long-leaf pitch pine, as well as the ever-present, spiky saw palmetto. 

At first I had a sense of pride, looking at the piece of land that we own.  But then  I remembered the words of Chief Seattle who reminded us that ‘the earth does not belong to us, we belong to the earth’, that we are stewards of the earth and should do all we can to ensure that following generations will inherit a healthy planet. 

This Friday morning, I hope that you feel at home wherever you are.  I hope that you are able to recognize the humanity in all of the human race, regardless of what part of the world we are from.  And I hope you have a place of beauty to care for and nourish for future generations until that time we go home ‘…like a shooting star’.

Have a wonderful weekend, Family!

One Love!

Namaste.