To Belong

I hurried down the road, carefully stepping to the left onto the sidewalk that would lead me past the mosque, down the stairs with the worn black safety strips, and to the parallel sidewalk that would take me to church. It was a gray cool day, unusual for early May, and I huddled deeper into my winter jacket as a breeze blew past. 

I love this weather. I wish I could live somewhere where I could speak the language and communicate easily. Like England. 

Ironic, since my passport was from the UK but I had only ever lived there when I was small, too small to remember, and for a brief time at that. 

I guess that's what it must feel like to long for heaven, I thought. I have a "passport" from there; my real home is there; but for now I must still stumble about on this earth where I often am misunderstood, struggle to fit in, and feel alone. 

If I moved to England, nobody would question why I was living there. Nobody would impatiently cut me off while I was trying to communicate. I could walk into a store and understand what everything on the shelves was. I wouldn't have to juggle miles of paperwork and worry about whether I would be able to get back in the country or not. I would belong. 

I wiped a tear away and wondered if this was why I would forever be a nomad, wandering from country to continent. Wistfully wishing I could live in the countries my passports called home and yet never quite settling down. Perhaps because no matter where I lived, whether the words could roll off my tongue like summer grain off the combine, or whether I haltingly pieced together sounds into a child's Play-doh figurine, I would never feel fully at home. At least not until all of this mess was over and done with and the compass in my soul that beat true north finally pointed clear. 

To the Home where I belong.