going home.
That’s what I’m doing.
And it feels good to say it. Better yet, it feels good to think it. I am going home.
It’s not that I haven’t been a gusto on the border. Don’t get me wrong. I love the border. But what I love more is being in a place where people care for me, people know who I am, people respect me as the human being I am, working for the cause that I am. Where hospitality is practiced.
I imagine waking up to Mom’s beautiful piano playing on Sunday morning. Maybe even helping out with the cooking this year. Sitting down on a couch and sharing exciting events from months passed. Exchanging hugs and kisses. Sitting around the living room w/ only Christmas lights on, watching a movie all together. Tranquility.
Of course not all will be hunky dory like what I imagine. But what I do know is that I will feel accepted. I will feel loved. I will feel cared for. And above all (recall Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?), I will feel safe.
Forgive me for not having tracked down my thoughts well enough these first 4 months of YAVdom. So many times I wanted to sit down and share. But so many times, I didn’t. And so it went, on and on, no sitting, no sharing. And you know, once you’ve made a habit out of something…
It’s been like a roller coaster ride for me. My experience so far, I mean. A quick tour through a binational girl’s life, or at least 4 months of it. Biking, learning to cook, unsuccessfully warding off the cold, crossing items over the border both ways (all legal so far, I promise), conviviendo binationally, feeling like an aunt and a big sister and a parent at times, interrogations by customs and immigrations officers, confronting injustice. Finding joy in the little things like riding a bike through a park on a chilly, sunny late afternoon; discovering the depths of sadness in other occasions. Being denied hospitality, trying to extend my own hospitality, perhaps failing from time to time, other times, perhaps achieving.
I’ve wondered what good I’m really doing on the border. What am I really doing here? Simply putting a bandaid on this much bigger issue of injustice. So many people and organizations work hard to put on bandaids… why should I join that bandwagon, too? Somewhere in my reflection about the events of these past 4 months I try to imagine that my experience isn’t so much about “placing bandaids” as it is creating relationships binationally. If you ask me about my experience so far, I can almost promise you I’ll talk about relationships.
I just can’t justify being a north american young person living in Mexico and focusing on work, work, work. I don’t consider myself lazy, not really. Work’s fine. But being “US-side coordinator” of a Migrant Resource Center isn’t a title I go waving around. I don’t love authority. I particularly don’t love titles. And it’s not that responsibility is a bad thing, but some of it that I’m entitled to within my “job description” isn’t particularly life-giving to me at this point and time.
Life-giving. Joy-giving. Consolation. Words we, as a YAV family, have been constructing this year together. What gives me life? Relationships give me life.
So where to go from here? All I can say is that I’m really thankful this leg of the year is over. I’m not necessarily thankful for all the needless, useless crap that I’d say was involved in these past 4 months– even aside from typical “border stuff”– but I’m thankful to be able to walk away from it all and know that when I come back, things will be a bit different. I’ve been counting down the days for them to be different, you know? And while I can’t say how that “different” is going to look, I can say that it’s going to be good. I’m going to make it good.
So much more to say. But there’s always more to say. And I can never sit long enough to say it. Maybe if you came with me on a bike commute one day and recorded the thoughts that fly through my mind as the pedals go round and round. Or maybe on a drive from Douglas to Tucson, through the mountains, perhaps at sundown. Maybe.
For now, anyway… I am going home.
I’ll see you there, right?
