Sable Monroe

Yesterday, I landed in Jamaica for the first time since I left as a twelve-year-old girl.
This morning, sitting in my hotel room at seven o’clock, I realized something that surprised me.
I feel like a tourist.
Not because I’m staying in a hotel or because I have an itinerary. I feel like a tourist because I don’t know how to exist here anymore.
I’ve lived more years in the United States than I ever lived in Jamaica. Somewhere along the way, Jamaica became the place I remembered instead of the place I knew.
The first reminder came before I even left the airport.
After clearing customs, I stopped at the foreign exchange counter. I handed over my debit card and exchanged three hundred U.S. dollars into Jamaican currency. My daughter exchanged one hundred.
The woman behind the counter counted out a thick stack of colorful bills and noticed the hesitation on my face. She smiled and held up one of the notes.
“This one is five thousand dollars,” she explained. “That’s about thirty-five U.S.”
She realized immediately that I didn’t know the money.
It wasn’t embarrassing. She wasn’t unkind. She was simply helping someone who clearly needed an introduction.
Standing beside me, my daughter was learning Jamaican money for the first time.
So was I.
The difference is that Jamaica is new to her.
It wasn’t supposed to be new to me.
Since then, I’ve caught myself doing the same thing over and over. Every price I see gets converted into U.S. dollars in my head. Is this fair? Is this expensive? Would I pay this in America?
I don’t know the answer yet.
I don’t recognize the bills instinctively. I don’t know what an average lunch costs or what a taxi ride should cost. Every purchase feels like a tiny math problem.
That feeling says more about time than it does about money.
When people ask where I’m from, I’ve always answered, “Jamaica.”
That answer has always been true.
But truth can be complicated.
I wasn’t coming back to the Jamaica I left. I was arriving in the Jamaica that continued living without me for decades.
The roads changed.
The businesses changed.
The prices changed.
And somewhere along the way, so did I.
Maybe that’s why everyone has been treating me like a visitor.
Maybe they recognize something that I hadn’t admitted to myself yet.
I’m not coming home to resume my old life.
I’m introducing myself to my birthplace as the woman I’ve become.
Maybe that’s what returning really is.
Not picking up where you left off.
Starting a conversation with a place that remembers your name, even if you no longer remember its money.