A Letter Home
A Letter Home has been published in "The Journeys (Los Viajes)", a bi-lingual anthology of original stories, art, essays and poetry. A Letter Home has also been"visualized" by Norwegian filmmaker
Anne Lise Stenseth and presented at art festivals across Europe.
Dear Mother,
It’s been so long since I wrote to you, that now that I need to, I stumble for words. I search for language. The one you spoke to me first, Mother, the tongue that, once upon a time, was the only way I could speak my mind and my heart; the one that is now withering, fading, elusive like a relic from another epoch.
From a different epoch, like you, Mother: in this age of instant messages and digitized feelings, you don’t even have a computer, and if you did, someone would have to teach you how to make sense of it. So I work through a frustration: I sit down with a pen and order my hands, so addicted to typing, to recall the craft of drawing letters, like so long ago when I first sat in a classroom, bewildered before a blank sheet of paper, and the hand struggled to practice the а, б, в, г ….
And the more I write, the more I thank you, Mother, for being outside the electronic reach, so that I’m reminded that we once lived without silver laptops, talked facing each other, touching, and conversed in living rooms, not in chat rooms. Once upon a time, our messages weren’t instant and smiley-faced, but heartfelt, heartspoken.
I write to you, Mother, I reach to you, and in my mind is your face, but without the marks of passing time, forever young, forever loving, always forgiving. I think of you and father–across a vast ocean, across seas and mountains, beyond frontiers and barriers I can’t cross, waking up when I go down, falling asleep as I wake for a new day. I think of you getting old– hairs graying, skin withering, arms drooping-– and I think of how many, many moons will come and go before I stand in your door again– a woman now, not a girl– and breathe in the unforgettable scent of home.
It’s been many moons since I sat in the back of a bus-– my forehead flat against the window– and watched your dear faces get smaller and smaller while you held your breath, your tears. Smaller and smaller, Mother, like the plane you watched taking me up into nothingness, off to a world you had never seen and would never understand.
A better life, I had said, and you sat stunned, empty, your shoulders slumped with a decision that wasn’t yours to change. A better life, you echoed and your arms held me tight as we both tried, wordless, to imagine what that life would be. A better life, I had heard people say when still a little girl, and yes, in America everything’s possible, they whispered into their hands, for the "enemy" wasn’t to be talked about and the Party was watching.
America. The forbidden fruit. The secret garden that we weren’t allowed to enter, the opportunity that we weren’t designed for. We, the small people of a little country, the communists, the poor, the powerless, the confused. The believers in utopias, the extollers of great ideas. We who said, “We believe in ideals”, but secretly wished for what was never ours: the color, the glamor, the smell of sleek expensive things in glossy packages.
A better life, they said, and in the dawn of sudden democracy, when exit doors were cracked open and reluctant visas stamped in new passports, on they went. The young and the beautiful, the ambitious, the seekers, the minds of little Bulgaria, the soul of a country. Those who had had enough. The ones who had seen their parents and the parents of their parents believe in a future which never arrived. Those who saw the elders of a nation take the blow of the transition when their monthly pension couldn’t buy them bread and warmth for the winter, eaten by inflation. The ones who finally had the freedom to shout out loud, “We want money!” and “Screw ideals!”
And home became a place they couldn’t wait to leave.
You and I watched them go, remember, Mother? My friends and their brothers, their sisters, their neighbors… We saw them off– Westbound, eager, hopeful, boarding one-way planes and not looking back. And mothers’ hearts tore open, like doors waiting to be entered. But only wind and dust blew through. Like your doors, Mother, that you now keep open: always waiting, always hoping for the footsteps of your only child. But I too said, a better life, and I followed– a speck into the vast space with no ticket to return. On I went– a heavy suitcase, a scared heart, and a visa for better life.
And here I am, Mother, here I have been, where streets are straight and wide and even, where buildings stand proud and freshly painted, French-windowed and Victorian, where high-heeled feet, pedicured to perfection, step out of sport utility vehicles and hurry toward gem shops, designer boutiques and fine-life restaurants. Past the reaching hands, past the blank-eyed ones who make beds on the sidewalk, past their cardboard hopes “Spare some change and spare a life”. Past them, quickly past them, past the cracked-out folly of a world within a world that we can’t afford to notice. Cause we don’t have any change right now. And we definitely don’t have time. No time at all. Time is money, and so is everything else.
Here I am, Mother, claiming space, and claiming a better life. Where grass is neatly trimmed and coffee comes in grande sizes to match the rest: big cars, large houses, and super-sized meals. Here, in the all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-buy, one-size-fits-all kingdom, in the comfort zone of convenient stores and easy access, homeland security and impeccable customer service, I talk to robot operators and dial nine for more options. I’m rich on credit and happy on paper.
And here, Mother, with the blessed, with the haves, the lucky ones, I get to live the California living. Vegan organic, lowfat and freerange. Silicon boobs and Silicon Valley. Beauty spas, yoga retreats, and weekends in Tahoe. On the week, they work long hours and climb a slow ladder. And I? I say, “thank you” and, “excuse me” way too often, and I say, “oh, yes, it is gorgeous!”
And I try to fit in.
“From Bul-garia?” they raise puzzled eyebrows, “Where was that again?” And, “Oh, but, honey, you barely have an accent”, they tap me on the shoulder, “good job!” And I? I shine proudly: more American now, more like them.
I fit in, I fit in, I fit in.
“You miss it,” they ask? “What, home? Oh… not really, I’m okay now," I say, "it’s been a while, you know", and,"thanks for asking. This is home now”, I say, and I believe it.
But at night, Mother, when sleep looses the grip of the mind and lets it go free and far, home is where the mind returns. You are there and father, and the mulberry trees in the churchyard, and the corner bakery, fragrant from afar, and the smell of sunburned asphalt in summer. Even grandfather is still there sometimes, lying on the firm bad by the wood stove, like he did before he passed, worrying about the vine and the corn, and what’s eating the potatoes, and the draught killing the cabbage. Grandma milks the sheep as I stand behind her– two ponytails and a pair of coin eyes – as she curdles the milk in glass jars and I watch the beginning of yogurt.
“What is it like,” they ask, “in Bul-garia?” And I stop, I hesitate, I search for words to tell home. I look for the this-is-what-it’s-like story. But how can I say it, Mother? How can I speak home?
Or could I say….home… home is where the sun swims slowly out of the Black Sea and begins the daylong journey to cross the Old Mountain, over the rose valleys and the sunflower seas, up and up, above the velvet slopes of the Rila and the Pirin, until it surrenders to the Danube River. Home is where the air becomes drunk with the scent of locust and linden blossoms at the break of spring as the stork returns to brood its young. Home is where autumn drowns the earth in color and the smell of roasted peppers and tomato spreads peels trough open windows. It is where winter arrives dreaded and merciless, dresses bare trees in white coats, and puts life on hold. And only thanks to the thick red wine and the tongue-burning rakia made with the blood of grapes do the souls survive the long nights to another spring.
Home is where nothing is ever easy, where we have little and live large; it’s where celebration never ceases, just to prove misery wrong. Home is where voices are loud and hoarse and embraces hold strong. It is where a stranger is always welcome, fed the last piece of bread, offered the only soft bed.
Home is where our grandparents worked their land with bare hands and every bit of harvest was their pride, the fruit of live that fed their children. I can still see their hands, Mother, coarse with the marks of a slow way to many harvests and long days plowing gray soil under pitiless sun, rising before the birds did, harnessing a donkey-cart onto the fields, wishing for rain, and remembering the lessons that the land had thought them. Their land-– the only school, the only home they knew.
And my home, Mother?
My home is all of that and more, beyond the reach of words, unmanaged by description. Home is here, where I stand: inside me, in my genes, my blood vessels, and my pores. It is archived in my heart, in layers of being and snapshots of past time. My ancient people I carry within: bold-spirited, freedom-loving, centuries old.
I continue them: a runner for a better life, a freedom-chaser, a bird of passage. A foreigner. An immigrant. And I remind those around me, Mother, to be careful to notice my accent, to pay attention to my otherness, not to ignore my difference. That is where my home is found. Home is I. And home is you, Mother. The smell of your stew, the hand on your waist, the care in your question, the tear in your throat when I hurt, the voiceless hope that, one day, I will return.
Until then, Mother, until then, I am sending you and father a warm embrace with a cloud passing by, bound overseas, bringing the rain of my sorrow, and I let my heart travel with it to the homeland.
Again, and again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"one of the most powerfully poignant and moving expositions of the complexities of exile and nostalgia for home I have ever read or seen."
Read full review on the Nottingham Visual Arts Magazine website
From a different epoch, like you, Mother: in this age of instant messages and digitized feelings, you don’t even have a computer, and if you did, someone would have to teach you how to make sense of it. So I work through a frustration: I sit down with a pen and order my hands, so addicted to typing, to recall the craft of drawing letters, like so long ago when I first sat in a classroom, bewildered before a blank sheet of paper, and the hand struggled to practice the а, б, в, г ….
And the more I write, the more I thank you, Mother, for being outside the electronic reach, so that I’m reminded that we once lived without silver laptops, talked facing each other, touching, and conversed in living rooms, not in chat rooms. Once upon a time, our messages weren’t instant and smiley-faced, but heartfelt, heartspoken.
I write to you, Mother, I reach to you, and in my mind is your face, but without the marks of passing time, forever young, forever loving, always forgiving. I think of you and father–across a vast ocean, across seas and mountains, beyond frontiers and barriers I can’t cross, waking up when I go down, falling asleep as I wake for a new day. I think of you getting old– hairs graying, skin withering, arms drooping-– and I think of how many, many moons will come and go before I stand in your door again– a woman now, not a girl– and breathe in the unforgettable scent of home.
It’s been many moons since I sat in the back of a bus-– my forehead flat against the window– and watched your dear faces get smaller and smaller while you held your breath, your tears. Smaller and smaller, Mother, like the plane you watched taking me up into nothingness, off to a world you had never seen and would never understand.
A better life, I had said, and you sat stunned, empty, your shoulders slumped with a decision that wasn’t yours to change. A better life, you echoed and your arms held me tight as we both tried, wordless, to imagine what that life would be. A better life, I had heard people say when still a little girl, and yes, in America everything’s possible, they whispered into their hands, for the "enemy" wasn’t to be talked about and the Party was watching.
America. The forbidden fruit. The secret garden that we weren’t allowed to enter, the opportunity that we weren’t designed for. We, the small people of a little country, the communists, the poor, the powerless, the confused. The believers in utopias, the extollers of great ideas. We who said, “We believe in ideals”, but secretly wished for what was never ours: the color, the glamor, the smell of sleek expensive things in glossy packages.
A better life, they said, and in the dawn of sudden democracy, when exit doors were cracked open and reluctant visas stamped in new passports, on they went. The young and the beautiful, the ambitious, the seekers, the minds of little Bulgaria, the soul of a country. Those who had had enough. The ones who had seen their parents and the parents of their parents believe in a future which never arrived. Those who saw the elders of a nation take the blow of the transition when their monthly pension couldn’t buy them bread and warmth for the winter, eaten by inflation. The ones who finally had the freedom to shout out loud, “We want money!” and “Screw ideals!”
And home became a place they couldn’t wait to leave.
You and I watched them go, remember, Mother? My friends and their brothers, their sisters, their neighbors… We saw them off– Westbound, eager, hopeful, boarding one-way planes and not looking back. And mothers’ hearts tore open, like doors waiting to be entered. But only wind and dust blew through. Like your doors, Mother, that you now keep open: always waiting, always hoping for the footsteps of your only child. But I too said, a better life, and I followed– a speck into the vast space with no ticket to return. On I went– a heavy suitcase, a scared heart, and a visa for better life.
And here I am, Mother, here I have been, where streets are straight and wide and even, where buildings stand proud and freshly painted, French-windowed and Victorian, where high-heeled feet, pedicured to perfection, step out of sport utility vehicles and hurry toward gem shops, designer boutiques and fine-life restaurants. Past the reaching hands, past the blank-eyed ones who make beds on the sidewalk, past their cardboard hopes “Spare some change and spare a life”. Past them, quickly past them, past the cracked-out folly of a world within a world that we can’t afford to notice. Cause we don’t have any change right now. And we definitely don’t have time. No time at all. Time is money, and so is everything else.
Here I am, Mother, claiming space, and claiming a better life. Where grass is neatly trimmed and coffee comes in grande sizes to match the rest: big cars, large houses, and super-sized meals. Here, in the all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-buy, one-size-fits-all kingdom, in the comfort zone of convenient stores and easy access, homeland security and impeccable customer service, I talk to robot operators and dial nine for more options. I’m rich on credit and happy on paper.
And here, Mother, with the blessed, with the haves, the lucky ones, I get to live the California living. Vegan organic, lowfat and freerange. Silicon boobs and Silicon Valley. Beauty spas, yoga retreats, and weekends in Tahoe. On the week, they work long hours and climb a slow ladder. And I? I say, “thank you” and, “excuse me” way too often, and I say, “oh, yes, it is gorgeous!”
And I try to fit in.
“From Bul-garia?” they raise puzzled eyebrows, “Where was that again?” And, “Oh, but, honey, you barely have an accent”, they tap me on the shoulder, “good job!” And I? I shine proudly: more American now, more like them.
I fit in, I fit in, I fit in.
“You miss it,” they ask? “What, home? Oh… not really, I’m okay now," I say, "it’s been a while, you know", and,"thanks for asking. This is home now”, I say, and I believe it.
But at night, Mother, when sleep looses the grip of the mind and lets it go free and far, home is where the mind returns. You are there and father, and the mulberry trees in the churchyard, and the corner bakery, fragrant from afar, and the smell of sunburned asphalt in summer. Even grandfather is still there sometimes, lying on the firm bad by the wood stove, like he did before he passed, worrying about the vine and the corn, and what’s eating the potatoes, and the draught killing the cabbage. Grandma milks the sheep as I stand behind her– two ponytails and a pair of coin eyes – as she curdles the milk in glass jars and I watch the beginning of yogurt.
“What is it like,” they ask, “in Bul-garia?” And I stop, I hesitate, I search for words to tell home. I look for the this-is-what-it’s-like story. But how can I say it, Mother? How can I speak home?
Or could I say….home… home is where the sun swims slowly out of the Black Sea and begins the daylong journey to cross the Old Mountain, over the rose valleys and the sunflower seas, up and up, above the velvet slopes of the Rila and the Pirin, until it surrenders to the Danube River. Home is where the air becomes drunk with the scent of locust and linden blossoms at the break of spring as the stork returns to brood its young. Home is where autumn drowns the earth in color and the smell of roasted peppers and tomato spreads peels trough open windows. It is where winter arrives dreaded and merciless, dresses bare trees in white coats, and puts life on hold. And only thanks to the thick red wine and the tongue-burning rakia made with the blood of grapes do the souls survive the long nights to another spring.
Home is where nothing is ever easy, where we have little and live large; it’s where celebration never ceases, just to prove misery wrong. Home is where voices are loud and hoarse and embraces hold strong. It is where a stranger is always welcome, fed the last piece of bread, offered the only soft bed.
Home is where our grandparents worked their land with bare hands and every bit of harvest was their pride, the fruit of live that fed their children. I can still see their hands, Mother, coarse with the marks of a slow way to many harvests and long days plowing gray soil under pitiless sun, rising before the birds did, harnessing a donkey-cart onto the fields, wishing for rain, and remembering the lessons that the land had thought them. Their land-– the only school, the only home they knew.
And my home, Mother?
My home is all of that and more, beyond the reach of words, unmanaged by description. Home is here, where I stand: inside me, in my genes, my blood vessels, and my pores. It is archived in my heart, in layers of being and snapshots of past time. My ancient people I carry within: bold-spirited, freedom-loving, centuries old.
I continue them: a runner for a better life, a freedom-chaser, a bird of passage. A foreigner. An immigrant. And I remind those around me, Mother, to be careful to notice my accent, to pay attention to my otherness, not to ignore my difference. That is where my home is found. Home is I. And home is you, Mother. The smell of your stew, the hand on your waist, the care in your question, the tear in your throat when I hurt, the voiceless hope that, one day, I will return.
Until then, Mother, until then, I am sending you and father a warm embrace with a cloud passing by, bound overseas, bringing the rain of my sorrow, and I let my heart travel with it to the homeland.
Again, and again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"one of the most powerfully poignant and moving expositions of the complexities of exile and nostalgia for home I have ever read or seen."
Read full review on the Nottingham Visual Arts Magazine website
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