It had been 8 years since I returned to Jamaica, the country where I was born and lived until 6 years old. I had never been away for that long. Even after moving to Florida, my parents would send my brother and me to spend summers with our grandmother. Each year, the extended family would gather for an annual family reunion. Every decision was a family group decision: Where will we eat? Where will we go? What will we do today? I’d never traveled to Jamaica on my own. It is a strange feeling to be orphaned at any age. This summer, I return alone.
“Welcome home, Mr. Ying,” said the customs agent as she let me into the country. My U.S. passport clearly states that I was born in Jamaica. But “Mr. Ying” is my father, who will not be returning to Jamaica. In a few weeks, I will be placing his ashes in the cemetery in Miami so he can be with my mother, who passed away a couple years before him. They are already together in spirit now, but the placement of the ashes on the anniversary of their wedding will give peace to those of us left behind. I am now “Mr. Ying” to the customs agent.
A wave of emotion runs through me and mostly an unexpected gratitude to be “home,” the place where I was born, the culture that I grew up in, the land where my parents were born, the earth that connects me to ancestors that go back generations and to family that still call this place “home.”
I walk out of the Kingston airport to the familiar waiting area for my aunt to pick me up. My aunt insisted on arranging my airport rides, even though there were others who could have easily picked me up. “I’d be offended if you do not stay with me,” she said when I told her I was coming. If you know my aunt, she meant it. She is a fixture of my childhood in the family home in Jamaica; which has always been where my grandmother lives, but now it is where my grandmother lived. It has not been the same house over the decades, but it is the home that my mother’s family would spread out into during the summers with 3 or 4 to a bedroom, others on the couch, and anyplace that someone could sleep when the extended family visited.
There is a new mural on the airport wall, a different splash of color, but the wall is the same. My ears relax at the familiar speech patterns. I am greeted by the summer heat, the ocean breeze, the Blue Mountains and the smell of Kingston Harbor. Everything around me echoes, “Welcome home. What took you so long?”