It has been a while for this diasporic who has been moving from one locale to another these past few months which turned into years as I traversed the US searching for a new home. In 2020, I took an early retirement due to the Pandemic from Northern Michigan University where I taught for twenty years and within a few months, sold my house, packed up and left the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, saying goodbye with a constricted heart to my dear friends, my home and the most beautiful of all lakes, Superior.
I lived with my daughter Gina and granddaughter Karina in Marina Del Rey for a year--a year full of readjustments, looking back, aching memories of lostness, but also, a year full of love, joy, food and seeing the miracle of Karina growing into a fuller human being and seeing Gina as a caring, loving and wonderful mother. I learned to get reacquainted with the Pacific Ocean, as I would take early morning walks where hummingbirds, avocets, pelicans, plowers and gulls flew. A year went by and Karina began preschool. We, Gina and I, would roam Los Angeles, visiting familiar places while discovering new locales. We went to Palm Springs for a holiday and saw amazing cacti! We would stay overnight in Laguna Beach and saw brilliant sunsets. We ate amazing food, as Ken, Karina's father, exposed us to new Korean flavors! Life was good even though the gloom of the pandemic loomed over us. I was home for a year. Then, in the fall of 2021, I felt the old stirring memories of my lost home in Taunggyi, Burma, when we left for India in 1969 as refugees with only one suitcase each. New Delhi had become home for a while, a New Delhi that we found turbulent, foreign, massively sprawled, but exciting and full of new adventures! Our parents were left back in Burma, taking care of selling the house and tying up loose ends; they couldn't leave Burma for over three years as relations between India and Burma deteriorated and all refugees were denied entry. When we finally reunited in Delhi, my parents encountered Delhi girls, forever transformed from the Burmese mountain girls that they had sent to India. The lostness, the untetheredness, the floating sensation of a rootless diasporic took hold of me again in 2021, and, looking for a place to call my own, I "returned" to Oregon. It felt like a return, as it was where I had raised my children, my son Gautam, and my daughter, Gina. We had moved from North Carolina in 1990 and had settled in Corvallis. The six years that we spend in NC were left behind, as were the boutique that I had started and ran for three years, our cape cod style home with pine trees in the back yard, the barbecues we use to attend, and the friends that had embraced us and made us part of the community--all left behind when my then husband got a job in the Pacific Northwest. Here, in Oregon, I went back to school to get another masters degree at Oregon State and a PhD at the University of Oregon. Here, I nurtured my children and my garden, my community and my friends, became intimate with the mountains and ocean, here I became a scholar and teacher, here I saw the world anew with critical eyes, here I was no longer merely looking for a home, but a place where I could leave a mark, a place where I can share my accumulated knowledge, a place where I can grown into a full human, a place where I would no longer be a vine, but an oak, a place where my being will make a difference, in a positive ways, to others. I left all Oregon behind one more time when I moved away again, first with my daughter to Los Angeles as a postdoc fellow to UCLA and then alone, a single woman now, to Tennessee as an assistant professor to teach at an HBCU, Lane College. I rented a small place by a large estate, a place that looked like a gamekeeper's cottage, and found a small community of people from the college as colleagues, friends, and yes, lovers. But time has a way of taking familiar and loving things away from one, so in a year and a half, I was back on the road, driving all the way to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to teach at Northern Michigan University. I was sure I would leave again in a few years from this beautiful but cold place. However, Michigan embraced me with a tenacity that was ferocious, terrifying but eternally welcoming, enfolding me into its topography and making me one of its own. Here, I came into my own, I came to be who I was supposed to be, I came to contribute to the world in a way that mattered, I came to be useful in a way I had not felt before. I became a teacher. I became a friend. I became a mentor. I became a writer. I became a poet. It didn't release its hold until . . . a pandemic changed my world--and once again, I lost my home, friends and world . . . Now months and years later, I found another sanctuary, a tiny home surrounded by trees, ponds, and hiking trails in forrest heights, Oregon, with an elevation of over 1200 feet, with beavers and hummingbirds near me while downtown Portland, where my son Gautam lives, is a mere 3 to 4 miles away. My bother's family live a mere 12 miles away. I get to spend time cooking with my sister in law. I get to eat out with my niece and nephew along with my son on a regular basis, testing out new cuisines and new restaurants in Portland, which I am slowly rediscovering from my decade long domicile in Oregon during the 90s. I am back in touch with my friends from Corvallis and my university years. I love the mist. I love the rain. I love the sunshine. I love the coast and the mountain. I love. And now, I just launched my website where I announced the upcoming publication of my poetry book, Exiles and Pleasure: Taunggyi Dreaming which is being published by Finishing Line Press by the end of the year. I am so exited to share this news with you! Also, so thrilled that I can share my stories, once again, from my new nest in Forrest Heights. Here is a poem I wrote about Oregon and the rain a few days ago. Oregon nights mirrored roads refracting drops of diamonds splintering into million shards enclosing you and the mossy trees in mythical mist. Thank you for reading and being part of my world.
2 Comments
|
Archives |