When I first stepped foot in the Delta, it was February and the fields and trees were bare. Without a leaf in sight, it was hard not to notice the emptiness caused by the pristinely flat landscape. All around was nothing and amidst that nothing it was hard not to feel obvious, like a stranger in a strange land. I've always worn my heart on my sleeve and surely in this flat landscape the magnitude of my fears and my insecurities about myself and about this job and about this place could be seen for miles.
A year later, I ran into two students at the school gate after school and one of them offered to walk with me out to the baseball field where he had practice and I needed to talk to the coach. That February day a feeling so different from the discomfort of a year ago hit me: Belonging. It was not belonging in the sense that this is the place I am "meant to be", though increasingly I wonder if this place is exactly that. It was belonging in the more simple sense that I was a part of something, a part of this place. Yet in all it's simplicity, it was profound and it swept me right off my feet. It is a feeling I have been privileged to feel a few other times since and each time it captures another tiny piece of my heart and sews it indelibly into this landscape.
A week ago, I drove back into the Delta after more than a month away and the same flatness that had so frightened me early on, now enveloped me in a sense of comfort. Yes, I am still a stranger in a strange land, but that strange land has become my home and the often strange people I surround myself with have become my family, not the one I was born into and the one I so often miss, but my family nonetheless.
In three short weeks, school starts and as the time ticks by I find myself feeling stressed out about all of the change this year will bring. Though my courses, my students, my administrators, and my colleagues may all be different in the coming year, I know I am surrounded both here and afar by people who love me and support me and want me to succeed so when fear creeps back in I remind myself that here in the Delta I have found a place, where in every sense of the word, I belong.
