Over my time here, the word HOME evolved to take meaning. Singapore is in my blood. Family is Singapore, including the many sisters whom I have done life with - decades-long friends. I speak the language, blend in, claim my space there as one of a generation of future owners of that land. I am looking forward to taking that space again, taking in the warmth and the comfort as one would on a Sunday night, sitting on the couch, after dinner, with the gang gathered round and chilling out.
If Singapore is one red color that holds together and makes a living human shape, then Britain or even closer, London added the colors that made my life as a human shape, beautiful. London is my mental and spiritual home. It's celebrated and mourned in my most formative adult years. It tore down and remolded the way I see and understand the world. Its ancient trees in parks and centuries of solid brick buildings in the city were watching as it tested my character. As in a marriage, we've loved and argued, given and compromised, torn down and put us back together. Lucky for me that London is as open-minded, wise and worldly as it is. Lucky that London doesn't judge or try to tell me what to do. I understand London and it understands me.
Singapore is mine and I am London's. Well, the city has my money at the very least, 8 years of 30% taxes and I won't even be living here during the Olympics!
I read something somewhere about 20 years ago that stuck with me. This songwriter whose parents were constant traveling missionaries wrote that since he moved countries often for most of his growing-up years, HOMESICK is a constant in his emotional state. I came to understand what this means really in the last 8 years. There will always be things that made me who I am that will not fit in that suitcase to the next place I go. Ironically, especially the small and mundane, like the three-part harmony of the birdsong I am hearing in my garden pre-dawn as I write this.
In return for the great blessing and privilege of being able to call 2 countries home, I have known and shall continue to know what it is to be homesick.
Love Tells Us Who
We Are.
When I asked the
Answer "Who?"
No Love Answered
So I knew I
Had to Wait
For Love
For
We are No one
Before Love
A missing clue looking
For a Person
A Star looking for
A sky
An "I am" waiting for
An I
Music Tells Us
What We Feel
But Cannot Say
Love Reveals
What We Know
But cannot See
Before You I was Nothing But
When You Gave me Your Hand
I took My Hand
For Love Tells Us Who
We Are So
When I asked the
Answer "Who?"
Love Answered
You
love tells us who we are - Donald T. Sanders (American, b.1944)
