Seeking Home
As the summer segues softly into autumn, Christmas draws near and soon I will once again be on my way home.
Home is a strange confusing word. This week, the Italian and I exchanged questions about where home really is. He has labeled us ‘emigrants’ - residents of a foreign country. To be an emigrant in this country sounds more long-term than my intention at any given time. I have no plans to live in New York long-term. I asked him then where home should be. Is it where you trod at the end of the day? Is it where you have the title of the property to your name even if you are never there? Or is it where you were born and raised and where most of your family still lives?
Home for me was a house on the street that bore my grandfather’s name in the country and city where I was born. This is where my father grew up and where my mother moved when they married. It was where I was raised and where my siblings and I learned about life and where we witnessed many joys and tragedies. It is where the neighbors who have remained for generations have watched me take my first steps, learn to ride a bicycle and then to drive a car. They will remember my laughter, I hope, much more than the mischievous life that I have led.
Yet when I go home for the holidays, I spend a full week trying to adjust to being ‘home’. The familiar faces that come to greet me outside on my return are marked with the years that have passed by. And even before I am used to ‘being home’, after New Year’s it is time to pack again and to go ‘home’ - to New York.
When I look out the window of the plane and the familiar skyscrapers of Manhattan come into view I am often overwhelmed by the comfort of the familiar. This is where I have my home for the rest of the year - a small studio that gouges almost half my salary every month. This is where I am queen and slave. This is where I have done most of my ‘growing up’ in my lifetime regardless I have only been here 3 years. This is my residence, my corner in the sky and the single location on earth where I find comfort when the entire world is wrong. These walls have seen me at my happiest and my confidante to the tragedies I have kept a secret to everyone else. It is privy to my frustrations and knows more about me than myself.
I have planned to live in my life in as many places possible, like the gypsy I have always dreamed to be. There will be many more places that will bear the label home for me, eventually. So far I have lived in Asia, in the US and later, possibly to Europe. Maybe if I am lucky, I would still have the chance to establish another home, albeit temporary, in South Africa before I finally call it a life and sign off.
There is joy in overcoming the challenges of setting up a new life - of reinventing yourself to adapt to a new culture and world, of changing from stranger to native, of getting familiar with its flavors, hum its music and speak its language like it is your own. Today I received a handwritten note from the Italian scribbled in the language of true romance that took me a full day to translate with genuine interest to learn to speak and understand it.
Home doesn't have to be a single location I guess. If you are lucky, it could be many places that would have significant meaning to your life. Places that have helped shape you as a person and have molded you to be who you are.
"Let the world change you and you can change the world."
by Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (1928-1967)
Home is a strange confusing word. This week, the Italian and I exchanged questions about where home really is. He has labeled us ‘emigrants’ - residents of a foreign country. To be an emigrant in this country sounds more long-term than my intention at any given time. I have no plans to live in New York long-term. I asked him then where home should be. Is it where you trod at the end of the day? Is it where you have the title of the property to your name even if you are never there? Or is it where you were born and raised and where most of your family still lives?
Home for me was a house on the street that bore my grandfather’s name in the country and city where I was born. This is where my father grew up and where my mother moved when they married. It was where I was raised and where my siblings and I learned about life and where we witnessed many joys and tragedies. It is where the neighbors who have remained for generations have watched me take my first steps, learn to ride a bicycle and then to drive a car. They will remember my laughter, I hope, much more than the mischievous life that I have led.
Yet when I go home for the holidays, I spend a full week trying to adjust to being ‘home’. The familiar faces that come to greet me outside on my return are marked with the years that have passed by. And even before I am used to ‘being home’, after New Year’s it is time to pack again and to go ‘home’ - to New York.
When I look out the window of the plane and the familiar skyscrapers of Manhattan come into view I am often overwhelmed by the comfort of the familiar. This is where I have my home for the rest of the year - a small studio that gouges almost half my salary every month. This is where I am queen and slave. This is where I have done most of my ‘growing up’ in my lifetime regardless I have only been here 3 years. This is my residence, my corner in the sky and the single location on earth where I find comfort when the entire world is wrong. These walls have seen me at my happiest and my confidante to the tragedies I have kept a secret to everyone else. It is privy to my frustrations and knows more about me than myself.
I have planned to live in my life in as many places possible, like the gypsy I have always dreamed to be. There will be many more places that will bear the label home for me, eventually. So far I have lived in Asia, in the US and later, possibly to Europe. Maybe if I am lucky, I would still have the chance to establish another home, albeit temporary, in South Africa before I finally call it a life and sign off.
There is joy in overcoming the challenges of setting up a new life - of reinventing yourself to adapt to a new culture and world, of changing from stranger to native, of getting familiar with its flavors, hum its music and speak its language like it is your own. Today I received a handwritten note from the Italian scribbled in the language of true romance that took me a full day to translate with genuine interest to learn to speak and understand it.
Home doesn't have to be a single location I guess. If you are lucky, it could be many places that would have significant meaning to your life. Places that have helped shape you as a person and have molded you to be who you are.
"Let the world change you and you can change the world."
by Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (1928-1967)