For the first time ever, I saw a small fox in my back yard one night last week. My yard has been home to rabbits for years. At first they were skittish around me but not anymore. The unexpected fox sighting made me wonder if any of the rabbits had been made a meal of. It was a sad thought. For several days since, I did not see any rabbits in the yard and that only confirmed my fears. Maybe they no longer felt safe here and had moved elsewhere. This afternoon one of the rabbits was back in the yard and from what I could tell it was business as usual. There was no signs of distress or discomfort. This probable and imagined encounter between a fox and the rabbit brought to mind the Longfellow quote "Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence." We fear unpleasant encounters with what takes up disproportionate space in our lives but brings little reward or value. Yet the dreaded moment passes, the stressor and the stressed return to their original positions, life goes on. Such may have been the case with the rabbit who likely lives in mortal fear of the fox. The two may or may not have met each other that night. I was there to see them both, the hunter and the hunted - just as those who stand witness to the real and imagined calamities of our lives.
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...
Comments