Do you ever feel like laying your head flat on the table and just bawling. Just close your eyes and lay the whole side of your face onto the table and cry. Not where people can see you. Not as an exhibition. Maybe, when you are alone in the kitchen cleaning up after the dinner that you spent hours preparing in between everything else. Or when you are picking the dinner from the gardens. Or out walking. 
Usually we are tired when it happens. Last night it was when I was walking the dogs. I had a washing basket moment. I stood with my dogs watching the grass grow in this incredible dripping heat and just cried. 
I miss home. I miss being a kid or a daughter or someone’s sister. I miss being the mother and the teacher. We even miss when we were Not in charge and Not so bloody responsible. Not having to make the hard decisions and see them right through to the bitter end. The precarious progression of our days.
It is called being a grown up. But being a grown up in a land where no-one knows who you Were is hard. All they see is a little woman in gumboots. I have no context. No background.
It is hard to be a foreigner in a foreign land. Many of you know this. Many writers are in some kind of solitary. Many Webloggers. Maybe this is why we are drawn to each other. But when TonTon and I stood and watched the grass grow I cried with a head shaking tired longing. I just bawled until I was finished.
Then I started to sing. I know we know that is crazy. Who would sing to her grass. But no-one was around. I think that secretly you might sing to your garden too. 
That is why you and I are friends. My voice was not the big soaring voice it used to be, a voice needs to be worked like a muscle, but as I sung, the dogs and I turned, and began to walk back to the kitchen.
I think this is why I love the farm and the gardens. They all know me. And a sheep has no need for background though they have heard all the stories. But the sheep and the dairy cow and the little hereford, even my border collie, they remind me of home you see.
And this is why we love our cats and cows and bicycles. Our dogs and our plants. This is why we have our cameras and guitars, our paint brushes or pens. Our tools and boots. Our ideals and oaths. Our stories. Our little work. Because we all need to hold on to who we WERE and practice that person when we are alone, or who we are NOW makes no sense. 
And we need to always carry a little bit of home with us in our secret pockets like a polishing stone. So when the washing basket moment hits we can reach into our secret pocket and grasp that stone from home. So we can find our forgotton voices and sing the songs from the sea.
Good morning. I wrote this last night before going to bed. Today is a new day and every new day we get another chance. Thank goodness. So of course I feel better today. Strong and fit and ready to go. I look forward to taking you all home with me to New Zealand in December. Then I can show you a little of who I was. Who I am.
I still do not have a car, did I tell you? My little cooking oil car is still at the garage far away. I am driving the rusty white truck but not too far as it is pretty rattly and wholly unreliable.
Have a lovely day.
celi
On this day a year ago.. A bridge. Images of the underbelly of a bridge.
Even more exciting -there is a story: Part One of a very funny story from the beach. Part two is tomorrow but if you have time you could read it today as well. In fact I am going to read these again when I come in from the farm work. This story will cheer me up and remind me of where I came from.
c
The Kitchen's Garden 
145 responses to “Being a stranger in a strange land, carrying a little bit of home in my pocket.”
Giving you a hug and a box of soft tissues. You need to take a wee bit of c time and re-charge that busy battery of yours. I miss home and people too and have all sorts of things to remind me of them in my office here. t
I certainly have the pictures! To remind me, but i should print more of them.. we should print more Miss T.. c
I’m so beat down right now I can’t even cry loud. This has been an awful summer. Have you read A Country Year by Sue Hubbell? Wonderful book – she’s a beekeeper in MO – and her old truck’s name is Press On Regardless. How can you not love that :-).
no i have not read it but i have been reading about the terrible time you have been having. It is awful to see an animal die and worse when you do not know why.. hugs.. c
I share those laundry basket times, miss c. It’s good to let it out. Have a lovely day.
Quite normal aren’t they, good to know really.. morning sweetie.. c
Oh yes I can so identify with this. You always seem so strong and inviolable so I find it rather comforting (sorry) that you cry too. Thinking of you across the miles. Juliexxx
Oh julie you do make me laugh! Give my love to our hemisphere! c
It’s a double-edged sword….on the one hand, I miss the Familiar and the Family; on the other, I don’t run into my Past every time I turn a corner at the supermarket….I might not be as far from my roots (geographically) as you are, but the gulf is still wide and deep…
Sit on the ground, and lay your head on Ton Ton’s back. Smell the end-of-summer sunshine in his fur, and have a good cry. He won’t tell on you. Some days, you have to go all the way down to the bottom of the well, so you can push off with both feet and rise back to the surface…
Much love, C.
That is wonderfully expressed. We all have these feelings that is why it is so safe to have a go right here, and I am all better now, everything is back in its appropriate box in my head.. I am rising again!! thank you marie..c
I’ve often wondered how you do the living abroad thing, it can be a pull and a tug (so many friends of mine are there or have been). Sometimes I think it’s the not needing to explain yourself, you just say the words and you are understood. – like when I chat to my brother, or my best mate we just “know”. And I wonder as the days get nearer and as you are writing and reviewing, home is more on your mind?
Take care my fiend – I just had a couple of really stinky wobbly days, where everything was so overwhelming, I didn’t know where to start. I still don’t. All I know is that I ended up making myself laugh…..
Stinky wobbly days.. yes.. that is it exactly, maybe there is something in the air.. so i think start in one corner and work out from there.. chook steps.. c
I don’t miss anything from before, I just wish I had done it all better, That’s why I cry.
I once asked a woman who was 104 what she thought about. Was she thinking about her memories. No, she said mostly i think about the things I got wrong.. it sounded such a sad way to be.. we are all such complicated creatures.. c
Have a good cry it does the sole the world of good… a stress reliever, a battery re charger and a ground wetter which is good for you cattle feed…
ah, good thinking, maybe that is why i had my little weepy in a field of grass! c
Great post. I’m glad yesterday’s cloud has left you and you have today’s sunshine. 🙂
It does not take long to haul yourself back up does it.. thank you.. c
My favorite place to cry is on the floor of my closet. The dark, all alone closet. Always has been since I was a little girl. But I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER after a good cry! The garden is my happy place. I wonder if I could bring the tears forth there?
Many thanks for being our friend too. We all benefit from your story and your ability to manupulate those 26 letters into words to express so well our understanding of our shared experiences.
Morning honey, this is the great thing about our virtual commenting lounge, we really are able to empathise with each other.. and say it out loud, so many of you today have the same experiences and that saves us all. have a lovely day.. c
But Celie, we *do* know you and you have many friends here. You carry your context with you everywhere you go. It’s especially hard living the rural life, because daily contact with people can be so sporadic. This keeps our focus on ourselves and our own little worlds. Personally I enjoy this, as opposed to being surrounded by bustling people, but sometimes it can catch you out.
That’s when I employ the “24 Hour rule”. If I’m whinging and feeling sorry for myself, I allow it for a 24 hour period–after that, it’s back pulling on the bootstraps, putting the smile on, on taking care of business (and it usually doesn’t take 24 hours ). I see that this works for you too.
We all have days like this. Just remember, you’re not really a stranger here 🙂
I love your 24 hour rule and you are right it never takes that long. there is definitely something about working alone all day, it does catch up with you a bit, when you least expect it.. though i have chosen it to be this way, I also do not like loudness and busyness.. i actually really enjoy the quiet.. c
Oh Lordy, yes. Having lived in 3 different countries since I left the US 20 years ago, I know exactly how that feels. While I have loved the adventure of it all and being mostly alone over here in Europe I recently made the difficult decision to return to Southern California after I retire at the end of the year. And mainly because I want the ease and comfort of being able to relax in a language and culture I totally understand, not to mention that I have children and sisters there. At some point in every gathering with my dear French friends, there is that moment when it is crystal clear once again that I will never *be* French no matter how long I live here simply because I don’t have their shared school and family experiences, their music, even their favorite TV ads…context.
And when those bad days hit, I also sing after sobbing. Forge on, Ms. C!
Dear mary, a kindred spirit.. we will forge on, all of us .. I think that is a good idea to retire to your first home, even just for the ease of the language and those children.. c
I completely understand your sentiments. My family have lived and farmed in the same place for over a hundred years – my grandparents were friends with some of the great grandparents of my childrens’ friends – so we are very rooted to this place. But my sister lives with her family in Australia and no matter how fast communication or travel gets, it is still an enormous gulf and it feels as though she is cast adrift from her heritage.
Good morning Anne, we are so lucky to have these instant and free ways to communicate but you are right they are only little string bridges, i hope you get to see your sister soon so you can sit down and have a proper laugh.. how amazing to live in an area with so much of your own family history, John is like that too, his great grandfather’s house is just across the creek.. c
Just had me a wee washing basket moment this morning after my washing machine gave up the ghost – just the proverbial last straw that broke the camels back scenario – I’m over myself now but guess we all just need to let it go some times – it’s harder when my Pete is away so much of the time.
🙂 Mandy xo
That must be hard Mandy, having to meet every challenge alone can wear on a person. and these washing machines, what is going on. c
Oh Celi, I have been wrestling all year with who I was and just who the hell am I now. For more than forty years I was a nurse, I was important in some ways and today people see someone else and I try to find the importance of who I am now. I am glad you can have moments that cleanse, that raw sorrow because then you can unload that grief, tear it away from you and move on in happiness. I am glad you have your stone to comfort you. Your sorrow strengthens you and express it you must it just as loud as the joy you live. You are a beacon to so many of us. Instead of worrying about something a short time ago..because I do tend to worry and agitate..and I thought of a post of yours I had just read and I said..out loud..I love problems, something to solve. That’s what Celi does and that is what I do! It treally helped. Maybe we can help a bit by telling you exactly what you are teaching us. You are still teaching and sometimes Celi, you are my stone that gets me through.
Chris you have brought me to tears of joy with your empathy. You have it exactly right. Maybe we all need to make big posters with time lines telling where we have been and what we achieved and hang them on the wall and say So There! Thank you.. c
Or the modern way would be a body full of tattoos ..um maybe not!
I am with you on that one!!