DreAmbition

The heavily rainy night greets us, making us float a little longer above the pouring clouds. Nervous silence surrounds us, as our community has been struck often by such disasters. One engraved in our geographical heart to the east side. But we gently land toward ten years further. Why did my tears know back then that I would not see this part of my love for a long time?

I am here. My body and emotions are reached by your fiery and clammy scent. Unexpected as destination I then finally do behold you when the road to my loved ones becomes lengthened by your earth. Tropical rainforests with sporadically houses enclosed by a starry sky. Where shall this journey take me? It is not that visible yet. My body is tired, my life turbulent, but I have arrived with you now. We are together again.

Getting to know you has been a path full of surprises. Right through my teenage years. For the first time my treads outside Europe. Plucked from an environment in which tough guys, designer clothes and popular music should have belonged to my priorities. A girl not like that would not have such pleasant times. And you were not as I had once imagined you to be or like anything I had ever known before.

How had I dearly wanted to flee away from you due to how all the dust, bugs, amphibians, reptiles and sensual heat unavoidably kept finding their way to me. After all, I came from a country where life and matter inside and outside were separated, where for every single tree it seemed to have been planned where it would come to stand, and being a high school student often was accompanied by a flawless polished look. I could not control you and make you fit into an old habit. You would at any rate change me and thus become part of me. Frustrated about missed childhood experiences with extended family, because of the separation by an ocean, soon gave way to the enjoyment of fresh curiosity. With childish mischief. And surrender in a young adult openness.

With you time has always had a different meaning. When in the mornings I would brush my teeth standing outside, discovering in the mirror on the wall how various birds in their primary colours and beauty behind me began to appear. The free afternoon hours sitting in the window opening, of the spare room in my grandparents’ house, overlooking the little hummingbird with its countless feathery whispers in the Faja Lobi haze. Water fights for which I would otherwise have been called to order. Playing with the dogs that I had never had. The friendliness of unknown contact with street life. Preparing meals, from the vivid market to the unprecedented shared dining table. Strong stories during electricity lacking evenings… And your irresistible, indescribably gorgeous nature… Due to which you have made me fall intensely for you.

A few years later, our second encounter ran rougher, and you saw that, but it was not because of you. You thought I was good the way I was, and gave me space for whom I could be. However, I thought that I had to look more like you and less like myself. You still took me in your arms, but also a certain distance as a refusal of that. The experience of you became too overwhelming for me. This pain and these difficulties were located in the Netherlands. In the narrow-minded cracks between generations, skin colours, classes, and so much more. Some parts of the subsequent decade without you therefore also appeared like open heart surgery. It was necessary. I had to no longer constantly lose myself only in elsewhere, but had to find myself at last rooted within myself. A deep soul-check. Learning to move my self-image by what I believe.

Recently, I saw you again quite unannounced. A stop in-between is what it was more like, not in the first place for myself or you. We brought some one back to her proper home, so that the wind could interweave you both as a final resting place. Due to this abrupt mission I accepted that there would not be “enough time” for anything other than this, and any attempt of catching up for lost times. That does not prevent life from making other plans. My Surinamese loved ones have moved on with their lives in the meanwhile, have experienced joys and sorrows, chased dreams, let them go and started making new, have graduated, gotten married, gotten children. Everything that I have not been able to witness, the transition from childhood to adulthood, to many fulfillments susceptible.

From a multitude of crossroads in my life right now today, I have had the possibility to glance into their lives. With views on how far I have come myself, and at the same time need to maintain finding my own way. I know by now that we both can experience difficult times, without having to be restrained from each others’ warmth. Slower and less smooth than hoped, again I climb out of an implosive journey. More and more joy, peace and energy is starting to circulate once more. By going to do that as an adult which I wish to do the most in connection with others at the places that in togetherness I can call home.

That courage and that laughter live in the present also here! Currently under gray clouds over wet green grass with cherished black and white grazers. My last step away from you, is not something that I saw as a farewell this time. Each unification will be once more a willful beginning, like the first time. We know now that this is life. No matter how hard, beautiful…unclear at times. And that precisely this way we will remain to be there for each other. The simplicity of our mutual acceptance needs not to be romanticised. Even if I will never ever find you again, the way I left you behind, the familiar remains between us. Time has created no distance there.