The Reckoning

Summer seems to be ending as abruptly as it started, 3 weeks before the end of it, the same way it started 3 weeks before spring even was over when it blasted into June with a week of over 90 degrees Fahrenheit heat. The rain feels very welcome, very soothing, with the realization that we now no longer need to worry about the threat of forest fires on this side of the mountains in our state. I took our dog Yara for a balmy, humid walk in between rain showers. She stopped on a very quiet street to munch on the tips of the deeply green, wet grass. I stood waiting patiently for her to finish, listening to the crickets, and absorbing the utter silence all around me. She and I seemed to blend into the trees and grey sky around us. I felt a wave of acute awareness of my solitude in this big country roll over me. Other than my husband and my son, I have no family in this vastness of over 300 million people that is the US. Without them, I would be completely alone, other than a few faithful neighbours and friends. I do have some friends in Texas, in France, and some cousins and an aunt in Belgium, but that is far away. I thought of a Belgian born friend now a Canadian citizen in Toronto, and a friend from El Salvador who has lived for over 30 years in Texas. They are single, and both have very positive dispositions and energetic personalities. They too, had the courage to lose sight of the familiar shore of their land of birth, and the will to thrive in a country not originally theirs, not linguistically, not historically, not culturally. I enjoy their friendship, their optimism, it keeps my own will and determination going, too. It is some immigrants 'destiny to be surrounded by the people and family of their homeland, like my Vietnamese friend here in Olympia. Such was not mine, nor my friends in Texas or in Toronto. I no longer feel sad about it, I have come to peace with it, but that does not mean it does not hurt anymore. My husband of 30 years was born in this country, so was our son, so this is home to them to the marrow in their bones. To me, as a US citizen already 22 years, this is home to me too, but not the way it is to them. The marrow of my bones is Flemish, and loves to write poetry not just in English, but also in French. It longs for my native tongue I never get to speak or hear anymore, unless I call my aunt and my cousins in Belgium a couple of times a year. There are no Flemish parents, or siblings, or extended family here to have visit or go see. Gregarious and restless by nature, I am to be a lone wolf, poised, strong, stubborn, determined to keep my soul and heart intact and free of the fear that one day I may be all alone in this ocean of people. I have been aware of that possibility for some time, but over time, that realization can feel more sharp than it did when I was just a young college student enjoying the adventure of being in another country. On bad days, it feels like a reckoning over which I have no control and I do not understand. On good days, it feels like a profound and not unpleasant surrender, like walking into a thick foggy forest of which I can only see vague, strained outlines. But then, the most daring adventures in life are that way anyway. Being born lands us into the mystery of life, and we do not know where it will take us, and we have no clue as to our death, its circumstances or time. So, I was already born and am getting to the other side of that forest somehow, so,being an outsider these 40 years already in a foreign land, I am very used to that feeling of walking in a fog not really sure what it is truly all about. Dying should not be so scary then,when my time comes. I am already used to the unsettling feeling deep into the marrow of my heart and soul, of  having left the comfort of  the familiar behind to take a journey into the profoundly elusive of the unknown.