Chunks of papaya, so smooth. The flavor at the back of my tongue, earthy and light. Satisfying. The color of sweetened blood.
I’ve flown to my homeland of Panama from New York to be with family after the sudden death of a beloved cousin. In spite of this outrageous loss, my hand slips into the warm glove of home.
At the open window of my brother’s apartment I look down seven stories into an empty courtyard. The city of Panama is eerily quiet. I hear a distant, nasal horn, a barking dog. This week is fiestas patrias, celebrating Panama’s independence from Colombia in 1903. A sequence of festive days: day of independence, day of the flag, day independence is ratified in our second city of Colón, day independence is ratified in the Province of Los Santos. People are on holiday, many in the countryside, away from this busy city.
My brother and I arrive at the home of my aunt and matriarch who at 97 has lost her daughter. It should not happen like this. We visit my cousin’s—her husband’s—home, where their grown children and grandchildren have gathered to mourn an extraordinary wife, mother, and friend. There are afternoon and evening prayers for a number of days. The Kaddish is recited three times on one of these nights. I feel my cousin’s soul lift. There is a wide-winged bird swooping in the sky outside the glass doors that hold the living.
What is home? What is family? Mine are intertwined. Inseparable.
Home is an electrical field without boundaries.
Home is knowing and being known. My siblings, my cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews; friends too. We know each other vertically: the stories and memories of great aunts and uncles, grandparents and great grandparents, the lives of our parents, the caring. Horizontally: our lives as children, our lives together and apart, the gossip, the love.
We are a galaxy held by gravity to one another and to something indefinable. In orbit. In shimmering light.
On the street we pass an aged pickup truck. The driver, holding a loudspeaker to his mouth, causes a rhythmic drone: “Scrap metals, chatarras, bronze, cobre, hierro viejo, baterias, lavadoras, secadoras, estufas viejas, aires acondicionados dañados. Two young men ride in the open back to accommodate the scrap air conditioners, washers, dryers, and miscellany. This is the only music I hear on this visit. These sounds, too, are home.
It rains finally on the fourth day. It’s rainy season in November. Still.
On the way to the airport on the fifth day the streets are full again. We pass the canyons that now define the city.
Where are you known?
Can a poem be home? A person?
¿Cual es tu hogar?