Identity

Identity.

While I start the process of creating a beautiful space for my son to experience his national day, in our home, thoughts rush to my mind. How much local pride can I give him? For it is I, from his family who takes interest in the local traditions, even if they are not my traditions, for there is nothing I consider worse than to celebrate something without meaning.

So many times a day the world stands in my shoulders when I think of all this, the identity of this boy is for me to shape. I want him interested, engaged, I want him to belong, I want him to develop and be the best he can be, in the land that is his land, with the people that geographically are his people.

For our lives will continue and perhaps conclude in this part of the world. And it is not that I feel I have so little to offer him, for I know there is much in me to offer, for I know the value of things, and I seldom take them for granted. What scares me at times, is not being sufficiently inspiring. I grab from all and everyone, the love they offer us, and rejoice in the tiny pieces of their identity that they let us experience with them.  Like a patched jacket of many different types of fabric, we are dressing our lives in what others share with us about their country.

It shrinks my heart to know that I will leave him alone in this world, and it is then when I feel the sharp edges of my decisions cutting me deep in the soul. I am in a race with time, I fight on a daily basis with myself to continue this journey, and to give up has never been an option. I push myself further in order to keep him above the water as much as I can. 

I think of myself, the mother of this boy, scared of the dark until I was 37, but completely brave when facing the world, and going after my dreams since I was a child. That is the part of me I want to leave him. For one learns eventually to accept and love the dark, and so I hope he will find light in the dreams, the people he meets, and love from his past will take him further into the future he will have to create by himself, just as I did in the borrowed country, just as I continue to do even in the absence of all the wonderful things that I have known, and that I left behind.

What a wonderful childhood, to grow in this country, far away from the daily exposure to violence and fear. That is the gift we have given him. That is the gift I have received and I will forever be amazed about the random events that took me here. But here I am, this is my home, and I love my life, with all its imperfections, and struggles, this is my life and I gladly give it first and foremost to him.