Unterwegs: A Journey back to "Roots"
As I watch the tiny icon of an airplane inch its way west across the virtual Atlantic on the screen in front of me, I can feel each inch as it tugs me farther away from the German borders to which I have become so accustomed. Each time the friendly, multilingual staff drops by my row, the words that slip off my tongue have defaulted to Germanic tendencies despite the Anglican fluency of all those around me. Preferential, you might say.
Flight after flight, checkpoint by checkpoint, I cross the point of no return... or do I? My heart is unable to adjust in such tumultuous situations as it is beckoned in many tongues from many lands; how can it find method of settling if I have no solid plan, no final destination as of yet? Denver. That's where I'll start. Then what? I have two final semesters of my double bachelor's degree at the University of Northern Colorado that will be complemented by workshops, conferences, visits to my family, rebuilding my harp callouses and desperately seeking both Franco and Germanophones to keep the polyglot, that is multilingual, version of myself adrift.
Finding roots: Doctrine versus Heartstrings
A word of my own language struck me today as I mindlessly glanced at the episode of the Big Bang Theory playing on the airline's entertainment program:
Roots.
I picture a tree, a flower, a tracing of origin to that which fed and built you. Trees grow, harbor life, shelter life, give life, but they do not move except when adjusting to wind patterns and changing climate. But flowers could be moved, picked, transplanted just as a tree could. Traditional doctrine teaches us that roots are the beginning, the foundation, the lifeline, the nourishment. Can we ever change our roots? Can we take them with us or will we always leave some piece of us, some straggler of a memory or life behind in the ground from whence we came? Pardon the extended metaphor, but I feel completely uprooted and am also contemplating the notion of searching for a new garden.
“Can we ever change our roots?”
Surreal return to the homeland after a thousand adventures abroad over the last 15 months
Silver roots as a memorial outside of the Schloss Steinburg in Würzburg, Germany
