Change is constant and we constantly change. I longed for things to remain the same but I have accepted and I have learned to live and love that things change.
This is about immigration, displacement, nostalgia--those topics and feelings that one will carry if one is an immigrant.
First I’d ask you to read this passage. It’s from the book Color of Water by James McBride. The book is written as homage to his mother. If you have not read it, you should check it out.
“Sometimes without conscious realization, our thoughts, our faith, our interests, are entered into the past, he wrote. We talk about other times, other places, other persons and lose our living hold on the present. Sometimes we think if we could just go back in time, we would be happy. But anyone who attempts to reenter the past is sure to be disappointed. Anyone who has ever revisited the place of his birth after years of absence is shocked by the differences between the way the place actually is, and the way he has remembered it. He may walk along familiar streets and roads, but he is a stranger in a strange land. He has thought of this place as home, but he finds he is no longer here even in spirit. He has gone onto a new and different life and, in thinking longingly of the past, he has been giving thought and interest to something that no longer really exists. This being true of the physical self, how much more true is it of the spiritual self.”
This is one of those passages that while reading you wonder…
Why does it seem like something out of my life? It's my heart and my mind...I wished it was something that I could say was all a lie and not even close to the truth of how one feels when one leaves a place that they thought of as home. This is NOT something made up. What is says is what I have already seen, felt and lived.
Ah, I remember my own trip back home in 2002. Wow, I never knew how people, places and times could change so much to make it seem like it was not even my home where I grew up and lived until I was ten. I remember that except for the old structures that were already present, even the landscape had changed of my hometown of Pindi. The street I lived on was still the same but surrounding it was a huge bazaar or shopping centre. I remember looking around me and saying this isn’t it. This isn’t home.
People changed even more than the buildings.
I don’t know why I expected everything and everyone to be as I had left them. I calculated ages and was ready to seen my friends be as grown up as me but I think I expected the friendships to remain, the personalities to be the same.
I grew up as the girl who had mostly guy friends, the girls were always older or way younger than me so I used to play with boys- even my girl friends from school were just friends in school because in pakistan, it was rare that young kids from school hung out other than just in school. One of my friends, my dad’s best friend’s son, was born the same year as me and I remember we used to do all the crazy pranks and set up so many surprises to scare the shit out of people. OH…ghost stories, we would come up with the best ones to scare our younger siblings.
The visit in 2002 when we went to Pakistan and to their home, I remember the excitement I had. Hah, I was prepared to share tons of tales about America--- I did not expect the awkwardness and the unsettling quietness. I guess I was surprised. I was waiting for conversation to start and never stop until it was time to leave. I remember the response I got from my mom and others too when I thought about why couldn’t people remain the same.
I don’t think I was ready to see how much I had missed out on my friends changing and growing up.
This is what happens when you leave a place. You take one image and memory of the things and naively, you expect that picture perfect memory to be the same forever. You ignore reality. You think time’s been standing still while you were gone and things have to be the same.
Okay, I admit, to hold this expectation is foolish and childish. I learned. I grew up and so I became jaded.I had thought time had waited…I was dreaming of our memorable old ways.I was thinking of my childish days, I can see that the world’s been painted
And all has been changing.
The lesson is do not think of the past and expect the present to be the same.
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