I want it all

This post, the first in a month, will be untraditional. It's hard to describe things that happen when it's depth rather than bredth that moves in you, anchoring you to a place rather than seeing new things. To illustrate my sentiments, a story. A dream, complete with a Joseph-esque interpretation.

So I had a dream last week when I was in Ankify, across the straight from Nosy Be on the mainland Madagascar, for Easter with my extended Malagasy family. Ankify is paradise, for context. A mountain, a beach, a coral reef, accessible only by pirogues (hand-carved wooden boats) or a three-hour mountain path. Fish caught in the morning fried for breakfast. Climbing the mountain to gather bananas, vanilla and lemons. Swimming to and then scaling rocks to jump off into the ridiculously clear water when the tide was high. And I was there with my Nosy Be family, my Majunga family, our extended cousins, my two best friends in the program. All of the good things, the very best things, in my Madagascar experience, were in one place at one time. And the third night in, I had a dream, a dream that pretty much sums up my sentiments at this point in time.

I was alone in the pool at Columbia, wearing my lap-swimming suit and a swim cap, freestyling with my eyes open in the clear water. Suddenly, I looked down between breaths and on the Columbia lion painted on the bottom was a red spiked starfish. And all at once, above were schools of brightly colored tropical fish, sea turtles, barracudas. On either side were tall tall coral with swaying anemones, dolphin fish, etc. Confused, I looked and there was a clowd of clownfish swimming in the next lane over. 

I continued swimming just until the wall, where I poked my head out of the water. The wall I held on led to the locker rooms, attached to the side of the pool where I put my towel, next to boxes of flippers and the bleachers. The other two walls weren't. Immediately across from me was the beach of our house at Ankify, the mountain and forest climbing overhead to the blue sky. The fourth wall was the open water of the Mozambique Channel, Nosy Be in the distance. 

I was amused but a little confused the morning when I awoke, the dream still on replay in my mind, on that beach in Ankify  to see the sunrise over the bay and a coconut tree overhead, a little covered in sand and stiff from the shells underneath the thin matress. This is my life, I told myself. Then what was all that when you were asleep?, I asked in response.

So I brought it up as we were peeling oranges for juice before breakfast, whipping out a quick French version for my Majunga host mom/now sister and host dad/now brother-in-law, my eldest host brother Cedric, sister-in-law Jacobie and friends Sarah and Marit. Jean Yves, always quick with a philosophical notion, told me simply and true:

I want it all. This and that. Opening my eyes without the pain of salt but still seeing the beauties of the world. A beach and a locker room. Madagascar and America. I want them both, but I know that the melange is strange, infeasible. But I dream it now because I know I must find a way to make it happen. 

On one hand, behold my life in Madagascar, full of wonders like spending holiday weekends with both my Nosy Be and Majunga extensions at Ankify, where they own a mountain full of banana plantations and lemurs, a beach with an airy house full of beds to pull out onto the sand to sleep under the stars, and a turquoise ocean with its own coral reef... 

On the other, my real life. The life I will return to, where I'm able to open my eyes underwater and use things like flippers to aid my swimming for exercise rather than pleasure, a towel waiting for me and an exit to the outside world clearly marked and visible. Columbia, New York, the United States. 

It's true. I want the wonders I've discovered and I want the adventure of the open water that inspires me to be fearless, to swim out and look. To trust myself that I'll make it back, knowing I have a family waiting for me on the beach. I want this experience to last, even to when I'm back with the only place to swim being the florescent-lit basement of Columbia's Dodge Athletic Center, a place with clearly defined walls and things to aid a process. With a clearly defined purpose and laps to count the distance you've traversed. With an exit clearly marked where you can change back into the person you present to your university, your city, your well-marked world. I want them both at the same time. And I want to maintain this when I'm there, this sense of wonder and fearlessness, confidence, because I know I have a plane ticket marked for mid-May. 

This is where I am now, here with twenty-some days left in the country. With a family I have been more than an exchange student for, a family that I am a daughter to chide and encourage, a sister to tease and share. Someone to confide in, a best friend. Commitments to continue this relationship at all costs and no matter what distance. But that plane ticket is looming like a dark cloud, no matter how I miss my blood family (I can't say 'real' anymore, because they're really family here too!) or no matter how excited I am for the prospect of a Madison summer or my thesis senior year or even, yes, lap swimming. How will I make it happen?

In Malagasy there is a phrase, ny boliboly ny tary: the world is round; we will see each other again. I believe it, I'm counting on it.