nobody left behind

These past 10 months in the motherland has helped me form an understanding of what has come before me. Growing up as first generation Australian, there was a whole lot I didn't understand up until this point. To my own surprise a culture shock, from what supposedly belongs to me, I make mistakes and begin to make sense of it all.

A childhood spent misunderstood, I’d become a foreigner to my own parents and a Magyar who had no idea what it meant. I found myself indebted to what runs in my blood, for I cannot run away from but only toward. Right on time. (some would say)

As a child, Europe felt like one big country town on the other side of the world. 

It meant Freedom– for my parents were home.

Their humour met with the largest smiles, laced with flavours of their childhood. For me it meant having a grandmother for the first time. Aliens to each other there was a certain something in the air. (mainly her wooden spoon– when I misbehaved..)

Being here for first time as an adult has allowed me to hear the other side of the story. For what had been left behind was simply never forgotten. 

I have extended family I didn't know about. I've been able to meet different versions of myself and of my parents. I've learned to love regardless of politics, God, science, nature vs nurture, and their brutal interrogations. It taught me the importance to speak truth. We're not here for a long time and there is so much venture to unravel,  the secret language of the universe. Regardless of all these layers we choose to affiliate with, we share the same past. No matter how far the pendulum may swing it will always come back. What is deemed to be true, will be. For the truth cannot be faulted. It can only be bent in so many ways, until it bounces back.

I walk through the streets as if I have been here before, I notice I'm not alone I see the same bullet-hole buildings as my ancestors. Old photographs from '56 showing the graves made for freedom fighters beneath the soil of the local playground.

With this comes the brutality of the people. It takes some time to adjust coming from my polite, cotton-wooled up bringing. 

Two worlds collide and a new pathway opens. 

AM