Bermudaful
Christmas Day on Elbow Beach |
"Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same....The glitter of sunlight on roughened water, the glory of the stars, the innocence of morning, the smell of the sea in harbors, the feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs, and something there that comes and goes and never can be captured, the thorn of spring, the sharp and tongueless cry - these things will always be the same."
Thomas Wolfe wrote these words in 'You Can't Go Home Again'. Well, apparently, I can go home and I have. It has been over a year since I travelled across the wide Sargasso Sea to this mid-Atlantic rock upon which I was born. The waters have changed as they are prone to do with the changing of the tides, the price of everything has increased and I have a new nephew who lights up my world. What hasn't changed is the familiarity of the faces that surround me, the slow pace of life, the inquisitive minds of the locals who demand to know every intricate detail of my far away life and the feeling of the sand as I pound with clumsy feet along the beach.
I thought that coming home would be exhilarating yet difficult and I was right. I feel like a stranger in a familiar land that has welcomed me with open arms, yet I am reluctant to embrace it in return. I worry about becoming trapped here again as I have on so many occasions in the past when I neglected my ambitions out of fear of failure and hid away on a desert island. I have written before that Bermuda is my paradise, yet also my prison. I yearn to be home when I am gone, but when I am here I am fearful and the old gypsy wanderlust returns. I look out across the ocean and I am calmed, but I also long to let it envelop and wash me away. It is a predicament within my own mind and I must remember I am blessed to come from this place, where I have known most of my friends since nursery school, where those I don't know are often blood family and where the nocturnal tree-frogs' song lulls me to sleep at night. You can go home again. I always will.
I thought that coming home would be exhilarating yet difficult and I was right. I feel like a stranger in a familiar land that has welcomed me with open arms, yet I am reluctant to embrace it in return. I worry about becoming trapped here again as I have on so many occasions in the past when I neglected my ambitions out of fear of failure and hid away on a desert island. I have written before that Bermuda is my paradise, yet also my prison. I yearn to be home when I am gone, but when I am here I am fearful and the old gypsy wanderlust returns. I look out across the ocean and I am calmed, but I also long to let it envelop and wash me away. It is a predicament within my own mind and I must remember I am blessed to come from this place, where I have known most of my friends since nursery school, where those I don't know are often blood family and where the nocturnal tree-frogs' song lulls me to sleep at night. You can go home again. I always will.
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