Going over my to-do list to check with AAA to send me my membership card, I remembered how I would pore over those AAA maps and mark out an obscure route that seemed scenic and had water all around. I am drawn to water - oceans most strongly but even a pond dotted with lilies can be charming. I am a fire sign though - maybe I crave to be doused and at peace with myself. Though we did not stay together long enough to make this trip.. maps still do remind me of him..
If and only if persist forever. After bonds are broken in body and spirit, after the years, after all feelings of betrayal, anger and loss have been washed over by the time's ceaseless flow. Does he ever stop and look back to see the detritus left behind ? The lives stopped short ? The hopes and dreams thwarted ? Does he like me wish time's arrow would move backward about thirty years ?
Every once in a while I do wonder what I did to deserve this and ever so often I realize that I am so far away from true knowledge of my self and my place in God's scheme of things.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
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