#thelong

Words continue to fail me when I think of the reason I decided to leave my home and my daily comforts. When a reason for something is ‘articulated’ through an action, it’s driven from deep within by an imploding web of thoughts and a surge of emotions that rise to the surface as the choices we make. How can any language do it justice at all? 

You can only know a feeling is true when it’s no more than it simply is: a feeling. Some thing that can only be felt. All I know is that leaving home is an action that truly speaks louder than words. It sure as hell is the greatest risk you’ll ever take. Perhaps because it’s the first one? And if you’re anything like me, you’re left with an even greater loss for words when you realise that this first risk won’t be the last. It’s a little bit scary.

Ironically, my home gives me the kind of feeling that motivates me to move away from it – not to run from it. It’s a feeling that pushes me to take off without fear that I won’t touch base again. Home is my people. When the home you move away from is made up of those you love and trust, you gain a lovely feeling that’s yours to have and to hold wherever you are in the world. It’s not a house you turn your back on only to watch distance dissolve it into a tiny speck on the horizon. Home is a kind of uncharted territory inside of you – your heart, your soul, or whichever wavelength of self-understanding you’re on – that shelters you from those fears and doubts in your mind. It doesn’t necessarily give you an answer to silence the noise, but it gives you peace of mind.

It’s a keeping-the-faith versus feeding-the-fear kind of situation when you leave home for the first time. That feeling of hope that my people remind me to always have has recently been threatened by strangers who scared me into thinking home is a faraway place that can only be found once I sacrifice my dream to travel in my twenties, and to clear the plans I have to leave tracks on the map. I’m not sure how it goes when you leave home the second time, but the first time certainly begs of you to prove how badly you want it. I almost caved in to the damning belief that home is really nothing but a place – a space filled with people by chance.

But a house in the distance has its limits and, no jokes, it loses sorely to the power of hope contained in the home. It’s dangerous when only a pair of coordinates becomes your idea of home. You lose a sense of belonging as you’re stripped from what’s familiar to you. And at a certain point, you feel an urgent desperation to physically see it again to believe it. But seeing it to believe it would mean losing faith in the feeling thereof. It would mean feeding the unsettling feeling – the insecurity – of being homeless. Placeless. When, in truth, you are not. You forget that you already belong. You belong to the people who are the reason you are fighting – with hope – against the feeling of being misplaced in, well, the first place.

Leaving my home six months ago has brought great discomfort as I tried to find a new home in a house full of people so very different from my own. Being painfully optimistic happens when you’re so hopeful that you’ll find another home - another comfort zone - and then it becomes a struggle to accept that not all people share the same sense of comfort as you do. Some seek it in people, others seek it in things. 

See, the thing about having hope is that you learn the hard way - the best way - when you’re determined not to lose it to anything or, in my case, anyone. It’s timeless. And the two remaining weeks I have to find a place to house my sense of home, is nothing more than a measurement. The way I see it, it’s only science.

As I busied myself with an empty beer bottle and turquoise paint, the Mevrouw described how she - back then, before rheumatism numbered her gardening days - put her green fingers to good use. Roses were pruned and the garden of her and the Meneer’s love nest in North Holland was primped day-in and day-out. Candy-coloured flowers were propped onto every windowsill. She meticulously maintained this playground for the birds, bees, butterflies, beetles and (okay, enough with the B’s!) other creepy-crawlies in the comfort of her backyard.

She made me very nostalgic. I was thinking of my own two Ouma’s back home and of Ouma beskuit. And of my mom and her beloved red lipstick and matching nails. Also of the concerning amount of love for condensed milk I had as a kid. 

It’s clearly not too hard to be reminded of experiences that are sentimental to us. Like, for me, being around four boys everyday reminds me of my schooldays and I swear, the memories of singing "Excelsa Petamus" doesn’t get old. I’m reminded of the years during which I won some and lost some.

The way sentimentality is often found frozen in time in photographs and video clips is comforting in a haunting way. We are reminded of the friends we laughed with, the friends we cried with. The strangers we feared for days on end, and the strangers we loved for a night. The memories of the crazy-cool things we’ve done and are finally able to tick off our bucket lists are so easily relived when nostalgia sets in. It’s as if a series of sentiments is a recording of the moments in the past that made us really feel with all five (and for the ladies, six) of our senses - so much so that the same feelings are echoed in our emotions today.

This clip sums up our last day of school in 2008. Dearest Mia, with her brown eyes that can be killer-beady, stuffed a flash drive in my hand before I left for the Netherlands, making me promise to take a look at what’s on it as soon as I’ve settled in. Needless to say, I got sidetracked. Four weeks later only, in an apartment in the faceless, mist-clad harbour town of Breskens, it was just me and the Mac and a recollection of Mia’s instruction. And there I discovered the meaning of a ”memory” stick: simple Word-documented friendship letters; music that reminds me of road trips to Potchefstroom; blurry photo’s of friends pulling faces; and video clips (like this one) that probably should’ve been deleted long ago. 13,000 k’s from home, this pretty much means the world to me.

So, as I listened to the steady telling of the lady’s stories, I noticed a kind of sentiment that isn’t shared in the stories I tell. I don’t necessarily hear it in everyday conversations either. It must be an “old-people” thing, I thought. And it’s a strong sentimentality that sets in over time perhaps. As a 24-year-old I can’t have it now and chasing after it won’t help. For the time being, it’s something purely to be inspired by.

In the few hours I spent helping the Mevrouw decorate DIY vases, I think she spoke to me with the hope that I would look past the wrinkles, shaky voice and incapable hands - and even the randomness of her stories about birds and bees - to find some wisdom in her words. She didn’t have to tell me dreadful tales of the war or about the day she found out her daughter had eloped with a Black man, to impress me. I like to imagine she was telling me something along these lines instead:

Look at me. I’ve lived in a series of moments and I’m living even now - simply sitting here next to you, not saying much but meaning a lot. Me being here is me living to tell you the tale of how I’ve stood the test of time and lived in all the moments it [time] counts on to pass by.

The Mevrouw was subtly teaching me the value of experience and the importance of memories. Of keeping sane and being well. She didn’t necessarily say much - being really slow in her way of speaking and all - but she didn’t really need to. The fact that I was sitting alongside a woman almost quadruple my age - one who endured the madness, survived challenges, dealt with time’s “defeat” over her body gracefully - was a privilege.

She was not wasting her breath, and certainly not my time. And in the simplicity of it all, I felt a moment of sentimentality in-the-making.

Pictured alongside the array of emotions it's able to express, red is quite the “colourful” colour. Red is a reminder of not only the first few things that pop into our minds - anger and passion and pain and love perhaps. It’s the colour that collectively symbolises the essential fragility and tumultuous nature of our emotions. I felt this as part of Utrecht Cares, when two other volunteers and I spent the morning of 14 February at Reinaerde Oeroeboeroe, a boarding house for children and teens with disabilities. 

We went for a stroll with the group of six boarders through De Gagel Park, a gem that's nestled in the modest suburbs of the Kanaleneiland. As a result of the poverty-driven acts of crime and racial tension amongst its Turkish and Moroccan inhabitants, this district has been identified as a "problem neighborhood".

But any trace of prejudice I initially had was cleared up along with the blanket of mist that hung above the pathways we took. We were led towards the delightful reveal of a quaint little kinderboerderij (animal petting farm), and the mere sight of chickens, rabbits and goats ensured an exciting morning for both the young ones and the volunteers! 

A moment I hold dear occurred on the playground. I rubbed some sand onto one of the mentally disabled, wheelchair-bound boys' fingers. I was touched by his reaction. The last time I saw a smile that broad and eyes as big as saucers to match, was in recent pictures of the eight-year-old boy I work for as an au pair. We were baking a cake that day and the kid was mixing the batter with an electric beater by himself. Snapped: a broad smile. He went on to lick the left-over mixture in the bowl. Snapped: eyes as big as saucers (along with a now spoon-filled smile.) 

It hit me: having ten fingers - each perfectly formed to hold, to mix, to feel, to help, to type this message - is such a privilege. This year’s Valentine’s Day married two ideas I have about love: that love is a selfless act and that love is expressed by the colour red as an emotionally-driven act.

See, I don't think our blood is red for no reason. It overflows and is "felt" in many ways - it's necessary to feel it all. Blood needs to boil when our heads get hot and it needs to pump through our bodies at crazy rates for whichever reason. And it really needs to make our tummies tingle when the tears - happy or sad - are not enough. It makes us feel. And if it's love we feel, even better!