As the north American winter hits my face, my skin tightens, and I embrace the cold. The air makes me smile. I enjoy it, because I know too well how life passes by so quickly and in one instant I am in one place living life and embracing all the joys that can be. In another I am in a place where I do not know myself and wondering what next.
Today like many other times in my life I am having flashbacks, not just of images but of scents of egg omelet and passion fruit/ orange juice that my mother packed for my school breaks when I was six years old. I had a green container with a large basement that she poured the juice in, while the top smaller compartment was for the egg omelet sandwich. I often looked forward to break times in primary school. The bell would go off at about 10:30-11am and we would all run out and find places to sit on the verandah right by the classroom where we could have our break snacks in comfort.
We lived three minutes walking distance from the school but we were always late for school. I cannot think of a major reason why we were late almost every morning. I do recall that we had an obligation to complete our daily housework before we left home. Because we lived in a massive government house due to my father’s work, my mother was not able to do all the work by herself and even though we often had house helps she did not want us to get used to having people clean up after us. What she did instead was distribute house chores among nine of us and have us clean specific parts of the house every morning before we left for school. Homework was not to be done in the morning as my father saw to it that all homework was done right after school before dinner when he would have us sit down round a 12 chaired dining table.
Once I decided that I would not be late with everyone else, and so I set the alarm for 6 am, I woke up, cleaned all the bathrooms and toilets in the house, which was my daily duty, ironed my uniform, had breakfast everyone was still asleep at this point and I decided to start walking to school at 7am. We often had to be there at 7:30am, On my walk to school I realized that there were no children behind me or ahead of me. Just as I was about to enter the school compound pleased with myself for keeping time, It hit me that it was a Saturday and we did not have to be at school! I felt like a selfish foolish git. For one I had decided that I was not going to go to school with the rest of my siblings because I blamed them for making me late and secondly I had been so taken up with planning this move that I had forgotten we had no school. As I reflect on this today, I realize how much I need to communicate my feelings, I have often dismissed how I feel about situations and others that it makes me act like a selfish fool and more so a hypocrite.
I can still be selfish and have been foolish many a time, I still get edgy about being late and I'm still that girl that does chores but I am also learning that there is no statute to limitations on reinventing myself so while it's okay to be me, its also okay to not be who I have always been.