Roots - Part 3

Movement. It’s a fact of life. The whole of existence is alive with it. Everything we know, dancing particles forever shifting, growing, turning, dipping down low and rising back up. Some movement is so subtle we barely notice, like digestion or breath. Some movement is grand and mysterious, like the rising and setting of sun and moon, but happens so rhythmically that we take it for granted. There’s the undeniable kind of movement that grows us from small infants into clumsy toddlers and eventually into articulate adults. Then, there’s the kind of movement that requires giant machines and huge amounts of energy to happen, traveling from one continent to another or moving from one home to another, for instance.

A few weeks back, I made the long journey from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to meet the family’s new addition, a niece due to be born at the end of July. Geographically, it was quite a trek, but the shifts I’m experiencing go way beyond miles and kilometers. I left behind sweaters and scarves and the turning of autumn into winter to arrive in 90 degree (Fahrenheit) temperatures and Summer Solstice sunshine. I find myself still thinking in Spanish even when responding to my own family (who wouldn’t have a clue what I was saying if I said what I was thinking). I walk into familiar places and, in the foreignness I feel, note the changes in me I hadn’t noticed in that other kind of foreign I’ve come to know so well.

Last night, I stood on the rooftop of my brother’s house and looked out across Philadelphia. The moon, almost full, smiled to me from that old familiar face she reveals in this piece of sky. In every direction I turned, there was something to bring me home: the skyline lighting up the darkening sky to the south; the sun’s remnants brightening the horizon, with the lavender sheaf he trails in this section of the world softening the outline of factories and churches to the west; a bird’s eye view of the neighborhoods all before and below me to the north; and to the east, the roofs of Fishtown, so much sky and the river I couldn’t see but know perfectly well is there.

A twinkling in the distance caught my eye, but not a star. I watched to find other lights, some red, some white and flashing, some in a line, some moving individually and far from one another. I watched the movement in the sky until I understood the patterns of airport towers, landing strips and that swervy feeling you get when the pilot says to “fasten seatbelts, sit back and relax, we’ll be landing in just about 20 minutes”.

In an instant, I felt that small feeling I’ve chased climbing volcanoes and jumping from waterfalls in Costa Rica, the true distance between here and my home in Argentina, and the value of all the things I’ve learned in the places I’ve visited in between. I understood another dimension of what it is to travel between countries and cultures. From my up above and looking down, outside looking in perspective, I could see the big picture. The whole world is no bigger than a marble, and I am microscopic.

I’ve spent so much time in my travels thus far pondering the true definitions of things like ‘home’ and ‘roots’ and wondering about where in the world to “plant myself”, as if roots were something one would have a say in.

Roots are the first thing to sprout from any seed, they’re there before anything else. Family, town, country, language, all the things that were there waiting to receive us before we ever came to be, these are undeniably what began our growth into who and what we are. You can choose where to plant your own seeds and to where or how far to stretch your growing branches, but your roots are pretty much set long before it ever occurs to you to explore them. They’re the people and places that once defined you and, like ‘em or not, will tell you the truth about how much you’ve really grown.