"Belonging"
“A Statuesque Towering Figure”
It was one of those rare Irish summer days where the sun beats unceasingly down and the only clouds present are wispy and evanescent. She stood in the midst of the Irish countryside, a stark towering figure against the Wicklow mountains and the gently rolling verdant fields. Like me, she was a transplant carried across oceans and continents to a land very different from her own. Across the tide, she would have stood in a monumental chorus reaching up towards the heavens, as the salt spray scented the air and the sea wind ruffled her needle-like leaves. Here she stood alone, buffeted not by the spray of the ocean, but by the ceaseless Irish drizzle. Like me, she does not “belong.” Born on a far-flung coast, this is the only land she knows and yet she stands out, her soaring grace, reaching towards the stars, a stark counterpoint to gloomy thickets.
After more than a century, her roots have settled deep into the loam. After years of breathing in the teary Irish air, her words are indistinguishable with the brambles that grow next to her. She is one of them and yet she is not. Standing underneath her spreading boughs, it is here I feel a sense of belonging. Our Californian twang crisscrosses our Irish tongue, a source of confusion and repudiation. They collide with each other, turbulent and grotesque; but for all that, they still soar, creating a joyful if often solitary melody. It is here I feel at peace with myself, the criss-crossing fragments of my identity reflected back at me.
We stood face to face. One tree. One girl.
