Where are you from? On origins and connections by Leanne Yanabu

Alone on the beach, Urashima thought for a long time. His family and people were gone. What was he to do? His hand bumped against the box that the king gave him. He opened the box. A fine mist arose from the box and blew around him. All the years he had spent in the kingdom of the sea settled onto his shoulders, and he became an old man.

Sometimes I worry that when I return home I will not fit in. I worry that Hilo will have changed beyond my recognition. I feel like I've been away so long I have no claim to the place any longer. When I return I am usually reassured because things haven't changed much. But perhaps the next time I go back it will be drastically different. Or perhaps I will change so that when I return I will have changed too much.

In some ways my concept of home means in a place where I am at home with myself, and I could hardly bear it if I found that my home were a place I no longer fit in. Sometimes I feel I have gone through so much and so much time has passed in every place that I've lived that I will have changed too much. I have an irrational fear that some essential part of me that is crucial to belonging to Hawaii, is gone and that Hawaii will be locked to me.

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