29 June 2008 – Lansing, Michigan
The rain washes the street and sidewalk, refreshes roots, tickles rivers and lakes. The rain cools the summer fire, a moist relief after humid days, cotton-like air that hung from skin. I will miss the extremes of my homeland, place of birth and childhood and adulthood. The new home awaiting me is further north on another continent, also swept by water-kissed fronts but of the salty sea not fresh water lakes whose bodies curve the horizon viewed by human eyes.
I am aware that I am becoming the foreigner. True for the new land to which I travel and for the homeland which I leave. When I return here, I will feel foreign to others; the people will feel strange to me. Inevitabilities. Opportunities of what I’m unsure. I am at peace with this change, the precipice of becoming that undoes a combination lock on expectations and tendencies.
I know I’ve been waiting on this “graduation” for some time, a long time. Stretches back to my teenage years when I knew I was called into the world, to be among people from many places, to learn their words and ways, to share my own, to expand, to be content in my minuteness and hugeness of being. Simultaneities. Blessings.
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Post updated: 28 January 2009.
Graduation by Melissa Dey Hasbrook is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
