The reality of moving hemispheres

I miss my world... this one I now live in has become so much larger than me that sometimes it's hard to see the speckle I represent in a crowd.

I miss my family, friends, my safe places, my hugs.

I miss the conversations- chatting on the phone until your neck hurts and the battery runs out.

I miss the connection.. being part of a community bigger than myself, being there to celebrate in the victories and empathize the defeat of others.

I miss driving to Mo Bay in my own car. I miss driving to Portland. I miss the calming effect of being both by the sea and in the lush green majestic hills.

I miss the fact that almost every waking minute seems like a dramatic climax. A woman walking down the road in something made for the stage, the audience commentary in the theatre, the back chat, and the strange women who will come up behind you and pull up your slip.

I love my country. I love my people. I know that times are hard there. Times are hard everywhere but the sun still shines there doesn't it?
Rhone wrote a classic screenplay about Jamaicans who traveled abroad in search of "a better life," dispelling the myth of "foreign being the 'Land of Milk and Honey.' "

There is good and bad in foreign. Foreign broadens your horizons and expands your worldview- two things that I believe are priceless in human development. It may also come with some financial reward which makes building that mansion in Cherry Gardens that much more accessible even if it takes you all your working life to save for it. But these things come at a cost. Sometimes a very huge one.

It is hard to leave home and return the same. We change with our experiences and we find ourselves altered for better or worse. Home changes too. While you were away getting on with your life, so was home. New roads, communities, politics, challenges and even babies now stand and look you in the eye and you weren't there while it was all happening.