Last night I talked to someone online for two hours. I laughed until I cried. I found the conversation witty and intelligent. And for just a moment I wondered what it would be like to really know someone that way. To know someone like me- who could read my words and understand, or debate, or hunger for more.
Just a moment before reality comes crashing back in, reigning glass and chunks of rubble down on me as I remember where I've been. Second chances only come once. I feel too young to contemplate my future lonliness and far too old to have it any other way.
Africa seems full of women like me, but I am, after all, not quite like them. They're left with each other to pass the days and mark the time, to chatter and socialize. But with my Western mind it still seems harsh and solitary. Most of the time, I am full of responsibilities and tasks that create a busy pace of falseness. I wear my labels with determination. Who will I be today?
Daily living here requires such energy and attention, weeks and months can pass before I look up to see me. There is time for lounging by the pool and escaping into books. There is time for planning lessons and preparing meals. Always there are knees to wash and elbows to mend. It is familiar and everyday. I am the mother, the teacher, the reader, the cook.
There is time also for the dreamer, the artist, the dancer. These so comforting in their ability to soothe, so risky with their potential to illuminate. I have developed a way to rise with their crest and brace for the fall. Because I cannot fight nor bury this need. And I have a found a way to live together with all of these things, these labels and tasks that define me without ever really explaining.
But there is another label, buried like a long forgotten treasure tossed carelessly into the depths of a closet, and retrieved from its dusty corner only because it was discovered during a search for something more modern, more relevant and important. Even in its retrieval, it is not rescued but merely glanced at with puzzlement. This thing still hanging around? What is this thing anyway? Whatever was it used for? Yeah, I don't think we need this anymore. And back it goes scraping across the gray and gritty floor in slight protest. But it sure was pretty once.
