Where It All Ended; It Began

Our plane lifted to the skies but I could not see the ground below for the tears in my eyes. My heart was breaking. I was leaving behind the world I knew. Our family had just shattered and now we were starting anew without a father. My world had just ended. 

For the next 17 years I lived a disconnected life. Everything that defined me—lay on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. It was set behind a wall so high, Jack the Beanstalk could not see over it. I mourned the loss but never truly got over it. 

Until one day, I returned. Though much older, my heart had stopped time on that fateful November day and now it started ticking again. Like fresh batteries giving new vigor, I explored the country and fell in love, not with a person but with a place. 

Then someone came along. 

And 3 years later, the life I thought was shattered was beautifully pieced together in a turquoise setting of white lace. 

I listen to Carrie Underwood's See You Again and the lyrics have shifted now. I still love Lebanon, in all her messiness of politics, garbage, crumbling buildings, and exorbitantly-priced potato sandwiches. Like a first love, I cannot forget dancing along her rocky sea's edge, the delightful taste of street food, the rush of air on my face as we speed along in the rickety bus. Art galleries, classical concerts, gourmet buffets, and hike after endless hike through cedar forests and vintage vineyards are forever pressed in my mind like delicate wildflowers in a scrapbook of time. 

Yet now, the stars are not the ones that barely blink in her night sky, competing with fireworks, machine guns' red blast, or nightclub strobe lights. They are the stars I see in my husband's eyes when he looks at me across the breakfast table. Now the light I follow is not the light of the Jounieh harbor or downtown's elegant commercial arena lit up to entice the buyer. It is the light of my husband's smile when I make him his favourite Martha Washington cake. Now my tomorrow is not defined by the crickets' incessant song as the sun comes up or by the planes coming in for a landing into the sunset, one by one. It is my husband's hand holding mine, reassuring me he will be there tomorrow, and the tomorrow after. 

Lebanon will always have a special place in my heart. It was where I grew up, where I learned what heartbreak was, where I stepped over the threshold into adulthood. Yet most of all, Lebanon is special because she taught me how to love. I learned to open my heart and here, in the land where I thought my life had ended, 20 years later, it began. With a man who saw me and knew—he loved me. 

I will carry you with me. Forever.