The Return…

Its been a while.

I always planned that when I’d have a really good stretch of time free (i.e, no college, no classes, no exams, no (or not too many) applications, no significant stress factors), I’d get all the other chores done. You know, that stuff you jot down for later? And that becomes even later? I figured graduating from college was a good point, and after my trip I was all geared up to get down and get things cleared up.

But vacation puts me in an ennui. Its like everything slows down, my motor and my mental skills. I can barely get myself off the bed, let alone try to complete and scratch off stuff from the many yellow post-its that decorate my laptop desktop. I guess it might be because this is my first nothing-to-do-at-all-nothing-to-worry-about vacation in a long, long time (probably my first since I was a kid), and it takes time to get used to it. I’m still on the procrastinating-college-student routine and I have to shake myself out of it so I can get everything done with before I leave for ze Motherland.

Ze Motherland!

Going back after eight years is all kinds of surreal. On one hand, its terribly exciting. Its like anticipating a giant present that you know will have all kinds of good things (and familiar sweet smells and sounds and tastes). You know there’s so much that you wanted all in that one gigantic present. And you just can’t wait to rip apart the wrapping and peek inside and revel in it. On the other hand, it has a sense of unreality attached, and something else that makes me anxious and nervous. Mostly because eight years is a long time. Its such a long time, and in that time the entire country has changed dramatically. Everything that I knew to be familiar, that I grew up with, that I was used to and loved has changed. People have changed. My roots, that had tightly hugged that ground, have grown weaker, the bonds I had with families and friends have loosened. I didn’t live the life that I had started there, and so I didn’t share the lives of the people who had been a part of that life eight years ago. For better or for worse (we’ll never know), my family and I transplanted ourselves, and circumstances did not allow me to return, even for a brief visit. In those eight years, I have become a different person from the child that left.

How will it be now? How will it be when I meet the family I held so close to my heart? Who I know love me so much, but whose physical affection I missed so much and longed for these eight years. How will it be when I meet those friends I held hands with as I skipped around the school? When I try to find my way around the city I grew up in? When I go back to the house I grew up in, now so lonely and cold without the bark of our dog and the smell of our family in it? When I try to relive the memories made in the 7 years I went to that school? How will it feel? How will everything have changed? Will I remember the nooks and crannies of that house? And of the school grounds? Will I recognize the streets? The smells? The sounds? The restaurants? The neighborhood store? Will it be joyous, painful, nostalgic, poignant, too difficult, wonderful?

How will I meet the people I have missed so much all these years? Will it be strange? Awkward? The distance insurmountable? Or will we in a minute traverse those eight years, so that it feels like the time never passed, the disconnect never happened, that it was always like this.  Will we laugh and cry and embrace, or will we be uncomfortable, shifting around till we find that place where it feels just right? I know the love and affection will be there, but how will it feel to be back there with everyone again, after the weight of the years and distance and age has been measured and exposed?

I won’t know till I get there.