Gypsy

I come from nowhere. Waxy banana leaves, the salt smell of the Sulu Sea, and motorboats whiz by with Muslims ready to kidnap me. I smell fudge my parents attempt to make, reminding us of America. My forearm aches and gives up from stirring. A one room schoolhouse with a basketball court, eight children of different colors and Esther Snyder are there. The woman who teaches me to swim in the deep, dark pool, and touches me like a grandmother. Cemented rocks outline the vast, cool water. I push deep and float like a catfish at the bottom holding more and more air, my lungs expanding outward. Swimming is freedom. The sticky humidity, the absence of my parents, all the confusion of my place in the world, stay above the water. I sink in to my comfort and security.

Then, the concrete playground of sultry California interrupts. A picture of Cheese Park with huge, rough blocks of cement shaped like Swiss and Gouda. My little brother and I tried to play there, but it hurts.

The screen flips to Chris: brown-haired babe of the fifth grade class. I don't understand why he picks me, but I ride the late bus so we can cruise the loop at the American school in Manila. Suddenly, being the new kid in fifth grade is fun. My teacher, tall and strong, with a laugh raucous and loud, loves us. She allows our minds to be free.

Moving at the end of sixth grade smells like burning tires from the streets and I see the pink concrete walls of our yard, barbed wire, and broken glass. A huge mango tree with safety pins hanging from string caught in the branches looms huge in my picture. The poor neighbors throw them to catch the carp in our fish pond. Imelda Marcos stands with her shoes lined up: salmon, fuchsia, burgundy, cobalt and even black, wearing a puffy sleeved dress and her insignificant husband hovers nearby.

Seventh grade, Wheaton, Illinois: the antithesis of anywhere Asia. In the home of wealth and snobbery, I stand out. A child reared in poverty misplaced and confused by the dire necessity to own white Keds, the ones with the blue sticker on the heal, not the Wal Mart version. I do not know the rules. Feathered hair and stretch jeans from the free house for missionary kids are my uniform. I do my best.

Our next door neighbor catches squirrels. He places them in a grocery bag and holds it to the muffler of his parents' car. His eyes are slits and his pale skin makes us unsteady. He is there when I yell out the window to my friend Julie, "Aunt Flo just came." "What?" "You know," I said, "the end of a sentence." I am still mortified by those seemingly sly words.

Compared to the frozen wind, air, and attitude of Wheaton, Seattle seems dreamy. A mist hangs over my high school memories making eyelids flicker and hair curl. No one owns an umbrella in Washington, only tourists or new people from California. I do not carry an umbrella. I still do not fit in. There are few swimming pools in Seattle, people are tired of being wet. I never really wake up in the six years that I live there. I wonder where I am and when we will leave. A girl I envy for her beauty and poise says, "You know, Tami, not everyone wants to hear stories about where you used to live." Her voice is still ringing 17 years later.

I make a friend. A short, red-haired American girl named Catherine lives only two miles away and we go to school and church together. However, I am not able to bridge the connection these people who had ridden big wheels together have. I do not know their stories. Three years attempting to be one of them, and I transfer to another high school to start over. Cheerleader, athlete, clubs and friends do not shake me out of my fog.

My mind hovers above as I walk down the un-cracked sidewalks back in Wheaton, Illinois for college. Experimenting with awakeness and levels of it become my goal. Artist, musician, writer, athlete, friend, I become it all. Finally, being different makes me cool. My funky style and traveled life attract people in a new way. I am comfortable in my skin for the first time. I feel beautiful.

Colin is as tall as the sky, a somber thinking luscious man. Love absorbs me. My combat boots and Grateful Dead shirt attract him as I pound in the mosh pits of Chicago. Music and bass dance through my limbs allowing me to jump and grab my hovering mind. No substance needed, I am high.

Art museums, auburn leaves, steamed milk, chilling wind, poetry, ice, and Lake Michigan shoreline blur together as I cruise through those years. Displaced and hateful summers break up my memories. My parents in Japan, I have nowhere to go. The frenzy lost. Confused, I run.

Separate and uncomfortable, I despair, "Where should I go?" I sort through the pieces wondering where is home? A series of events brings me to my first home, a VW van. Mobile, comfortable, and my space. I find it. Space and time join, I carry it with me.

A gypsy does not need a home. Memories build a home within. As a snail, mine is on my back. Each new ring of age brings fortitude and solace. Although the urge to move descends upon me every other year with a force that leaves me uncertain I can shake it, I breathe through it. Mind over move. My home is where I am. I come from everywhere.