Hey!
One week. A little more even. Whatever you imagine coming home after 3 years of solo riding a bike around the world to be like – you’re right. It’s everything, in mass.
My head is stuffed with just as much cotton today as it was when I checked in with you last week. That’s alright though as I don’t have much hurry in figuring everything out. More than a lot of things have happened this past week. Though rather than giving you an objective log on what – I thought I’d briefly share with you, just one of those unfinished thoughts I’ve carried through it.
Every other week our local newspaper Sundsvalls Tidning publishes a brief chronicle of mine. This is a quick translation of the one from the other day:
‘I have all I own hanging from my racks, and wherever I pitch my tent for the night I have my home.’
I don’t know how many times, or even in how many languages, I’ve listened to myself trying to explain this simple truth. The one of how home isn’t defined by address registrations or too-much-stuff in cupboards, but by something deep inside one’s gut. And how thanks to the overwhelming warmth and acts of humanity I’ve had the privilege to meet wherever my front wheel has taken me these past years – that small flame has always been kept alive inside me. I’m not even saying this metaphorically. During 1042 days and nights I peddled my steel bicycle to some of the most forgotten corners of our planet, and over and over again – I got to arrive at home.
Then came last Saturday. And it sure is a funny one, this thing with definitions. Because while every syllable of the past sentences have been my truth, they’ve never really been true. It wasn’t until then and there – turning that last corner onto my hometown square Stora Torget, welcomed by what seemed like every familiar face I’ve ever met – that unrestrained punch in the diaphragm told me I was fully and truly Home.
Home to me – still isn’t about framed pictures on the walls or perfectly sat down armchairs. It really is about that stroke of light living in one’s chest. The light that through the kindness of a never-ending line of people from all over the world, not once had to fade in mine. The same light that at that magical moment last Saturday, instantly ignited into a full blown and completely uncontrollable forrest fire.
I rode around the world. Now at last – I am Home. And I so want to take this opportunity to thank every single one of you for heading out the door to welcome me here. We were given -15°C that day, still life had never seemed warmer. I’m in Sundsvall, Sweden. Inside my chest the wildfire dances freely with the beat of my heart – and I’m once again blessed to feel like the happiest girl on Earth. Because I’m Home.
At the very same moment so many of us sharing this – and every other – town aren’t. For 3 years time I’ve made way up, down, through and around the world and have always been given a warm embrace in which to land safely. I’ve been given unconditional friendship from people who’se language I don’t understand. I’ve received bowls of rice from people who’d rather welcome a stranger than go to bed without hunger. I’ve been taken in for the night, regardless of whether or not that calls for someone’s grandmother to sleep top and tail with me to give room for us all.
I’ve never needed any of this.
Still people with a bare minimum have given me everything. More than anything, they’ve given essential oxygen to that little flame in my chest – all the way home. Which currently happens to be a place where people are arriving in desperate and vital need of help. And however we wish to put it, fact remains – we have it all. Never has an equation seemed more obvious.
None of us has the power to do everything, but I say we all have a damn responsibility to do something. If nothing else because when we’re furthest from Home, a few single molecules of oxygen given to that little flame in one’s chest is the CPR of the soul.
And we’re not fckn people leaving breathless friends on the ground.
Until next time,
Fredrika
PS.
Sorry. I’ll try to be on time next Sunday :-)