With the sun's love

 Dear future hubster, 

my supermarket rose, one which I became - was made? - responsible for against my own will and despite what I thought were very clear statements regarding how I don't want flowers, well, that rose is now entering its second year and decided to teach me a very unsurprising, annoyingly didactic, and yet somehow profound lesson. 

It decided to reward the two repotting, the watering, the coffee grains, the crushed eggshells, the sticky things that are supposed to catch bugs, and the motivational talks with not one, but three new buds (and counting).

I know that this is what roses are supposed to do. What I also know is that the repotting was reluctant, the watering sometimes rhapsodic, the coffee and the eggshells a bit of a desperate move to counter the not always exactly heartfelt motivational talks. In short, I know that I wasn't always fully committed to raising this rose, and that it would have been understandable if it didn't thrive. I would have deserved it. And then I also know that thriving is not alwaus a given, that sometimes roses don't make it to next spring, that sometimes all the committed and heartfelt caring and nourishing is still not enough. 

And yet here we are. The rose I'm responsible for is maybe telling me that there is forgiveness, that the important thing is that I did come around. Maybe it's telling me that whether my caring and nourishing will be enough is beside the point. To do it anyway. At least that's what I choose to hear. 

These small hours

 Dear future hubster, 

sometimes a few fake spring days pops up right after the coldest night of the year, the winds are suddenly not icy sharp, the birds are shouting before it's even sunrise, and this girl pulls out the sorter skirts and the spring fragrance. 

And as she walks through the usual street and feels that the cold hard crust around her heart might be softening a little bit, and considers picking up pastries for the office, she thinks about a song she hadn't listened to in years. One that she'd liked very much at the time, one that she remembers having meant a lot for somebody else, and at the time she didn't understand how it made that somebody else so emotional. 

So naturally she puts the song onto the playlist, mood already altered by the mild temperatures, the self-inflicted olfactory trigger, and the fact that it's a Friday, and... there it comes. All of them feelings hit her out of nowhere, resulting in nostalgic crying three times over. There is something in the melody, or the words, the alignment of the stars, heartaches that have been pushed down, worries and laughter, some magic combination that makes her feel the New York air (humid and garbage-y), hear the hum of traffic, she can even see the scaffolding on some random stretch of 2nd Avenue, the lights are soft, the movements of masses are wavy and secretly organised, and the whole thing just squishes her heart a little. A lot. 

And maybe other people have been listening to the same song, or mybe they also feel that the cold hard crust around their hearts might be softening a little bit, or they too experienced olfactory triggers (ie somebody around them smells nice), or maybe she's just projecting it all, but there seems to be a tiny shift in how the world is that day. It almost feels like... hope? Not just the relief that comes when the winds are not icy sharp, that we might have survived this winter, but the tiniest glimpse of faith that maybe, just maybe, we might have a chance at the next one too. 

Nobody said it was easy

 Dear future hubster,

there is a dark side to all of those "home is" moments, I just usually choose to not give them too much airtime, partly due to the false belief that if I pretend it doesn't exist it will go away (if that ever worked for anybody please let me know), and partly because I do give in to the other false belief that I don't have the right for dark moments because of the bright moments. Pick your lane kinda thinking, you should be grateful kinda thinking.

The dark side does exist nonetheless, and sometimes it pops up in what should be the brightest "home is" moments. When you're somewhere you've been waiting to be and suddenly don't know what you're doing there; when you're with people you've been longing to see and now you doubt if they've been longing to see you too; when you feel like you're being pulled in a hundred directions and you don't want to go to any of them; always, always when you have to live out of a suitcase  and people think it's funny but all you feel is that there is literally no place for you and your shoes; when you don't remember why, and all the other questions flood you. "Who am I?  Why am I here? I thought I wanted to be here, why am I not ecstatic? I thought they wanted me to be here, why are they not ecstatic?  Ugh why are they so ecstatic it's just me? Did they miss me? Will they miss me? Do I matter? How much? How do I know?  Am I enough?  Am I too much?  How do I know?  Did I mess it up? Am I going to die alone?  Will anybody care?"

And then of course you go to the next gathering and book the next train and pack more cheese and chocolate and send the postcards and the socks and the books. Because all the love is out there and it is worth it. 

You just wish that everybody knew that globetrotters,  trail followers, cool aunties,  larger-than-life uncles, serial suitcase breakers, we are like all other people. Sometimes we bring the light, sometimes we need the light.

Rise to find the sun

Dear future hubster,

May the odds be ever in our favour. May the year be generous and kind and forgiving, and may it help us getting closer to everything we want. May what we want overlap with what we need. May our love keep shining, may it be appreciated, amplified, and returned. May we receive plenty and pay it forward. May we keep dancing when the lights go out. May we hope defiantly; may our love shelter us from our fears.

May it be better; may we make it so.

That (lovin') feelin'

 Dear future hubster, 

you know as much as anybody who's ever met me and paid attention that I spend a loooot of time searching for meaning. Almost as much time as I spend wondering what and where home is, and how I can make it where I am. Oh and also trying to resist the feeling of home when it starts approaching, because complicating my own life should be an Olympic sport. 

And I know when it starts approaching, I recognise the signs, and I welcome them every time. Whether it's going to a concert venue three times in as many months, returning to the Christmas concert at the Danish church for the second time (doing anything annual for the second time really), being invited to a random theatre show because people know I'd be around,  knowing a backup cocktail bar when the first we go to is closed, seeing a familiar face coming out of the metro because I see them on my Saturday morning runs in the park, knowing people at the office party, knowing people at the book club, knowing people, being known... that's how it begins. 

And right now that's all I know. It has begun, and that's a good thing. 

What was I made for?

 Dear future hubster,

you don't need me to tell you that a lot of awful things are happening in the world, more so nowadays than what I think I remember, and you also don't need me to tell you that it's difficult for a girl like me not only because I want the world to be a lovely cozy wonderful place for everybody,  but also because I don't know what to do to make it so. (Now come think of it, statements starting with "you don't need me" don't make it any better either.)

So when we're lightyears away from when WTF was an appropriate and accurate response to the things happening, when a girl like me, one who lives and thrives on reading and writing, one who would not ever shut up, doesn't know what to say because the words have no meaning or the meaning they have doesn't reflect the reality we're experiencing, the nagging voices asking what I'm doing here and what for and what the point is are getting all the louder, and the "what am I good for" doesn't feel like a question I should or could ask somebody else.

The somebody elses do come around though, and whoever is in charge of my visitors' schedules has a particular sense of humour because they always tend to show up at the same time, so after weeks of just me and the nagging voices there's suddenly representatives of the Luxembourg crew, the family crew, the Juba crew, the New York crew, and the Goma crew making their appearances all within two weeks, and they do make me oh so happy because they are unassuming and no-nonsense and they ask the good questions and say the funny things and cry about the important things and also laugh about them and there's cheese and sleepy faces and suitcases on the floor and somewhere within the busy uneventfulness of an impromptu work-from-my-home gettogether I have a revelation.

That maybe my purpose is simply that somebody can take a nap on my couch, should they need it. 

There she goes again

 Dear future hubster, 

earlier this summer people kept asking me where I'm going for holidays, and depending on the level of small talk-ness of the interaction, I responded in more or less detail that I don't really have a lot of leave days because it's my first year in Belgium etc etc.

But then I started thinking and had to admit that even if I had the days, I wouldn't know what to do or where to go. In the past ten years since I left my home by the (Petrusse) river, my summer holidays consisted of The European Tour: a few weeks of couchsurfing between my friends and family, living out of a suitcase that infamously exploded in many living rooms, dropping keys in mailboxes as lousy part-time lovers, forgetting personal items of a great variety, as if wanting to leave proof that I was there. 

So when I finally acknowledged that it would not do any good to anybody if I didn't I took a week and did what I do best: got on a bunch of trains and covered a thousand kilometers or two, invited myself to family holidays and family homes; due to some plant-aunt duties I even managed to drop a key in a mailbox. And of course I forgot a few personal items here and there. 

What I also did was feeling both a sense of comfort, a familiarity, an odd freedom, gratefulness that I get to do this, and an unexpected almost-revelation. That of course I do a European Tour, this is who I am, showing up in the life of the people I love when I can.

I also learnt a few things (what good is a trip if it doesn't come with lessons?). I learnt that the European tour does get easier in the sense that it doesn't involve jet lag or overseas travel, and 1000+ km can be covered by public transport, (something I love and will never not praise). And that the European tour does not get easier in the sense that I get waves of sadness washing over me every time I leave a place and a group of people, and that I don't want to go back to doing responsible things.

And then when I did go back to doing responsible things, I learnt that there's beauty in that too. In the the back to school mood,  in the office suddenly filling up again with people old and new, and in the joy of seeing them again, the comfort of the familiar. 

Something I tend to fight, something that tends to happen anyway and then I tend to be grateful for it.