Home is such a tedious, overdone subject for those of us who
have moved a lot. Where are we from? Where did we live before this move? How
long does it take before a new place becomes a home? Is it the people, the unpacked bags, the
routines, knowing multiple ways to get to a single destination, the Legos on
the floor?
Talking about home in an expat crowd is as cliché as talking
about the weather, but we just can’t let go of it, any more than we can stop
talking about how hot is in Qatar. I have gotten so tired of myself as I have
worked on this post, so sick of talking about home home home that I keep
closing the file and walking away. And
then I meet yet another someone who says “oh you got here last August, you’re still
so new!” and I start in on thinking some more about home.
We’ve been here nine months now. Nine months, in my
experience, is about when I usually start feeling like I have the hang of a new
place- when the “trailing” part of this undesirable label stops weighing so
heavily on me. I’m more relaxed and
independent, I explore this no-longer-quite-new home less tentatively.
All these moves may have not been good for my resume but I’d
say I’m highly qualified to talk about the concept of home. Somehow in the past ten years I
became the home-maker, the one who assembles and arranges the furniture and
books and art, who decides which utensils, pots, and pans belong on which
shelves. I hire and manage any domestic staff we happen to have. I have
experienced what having a reliable permanent home is like- I grew up in one
house from ages 3-16, the same one to which we still return for visits to my
parents. I went to the same camp as a
camper and later staff for all but three of the summers between 1983 and
2001. Then at 16 I left for 9 months in
France and since then I have spent an average of around 12 months anywhere I’ve
lived in the past 24 years (not counting traveling, but I do count places that for various reasons I/we meant to live for a year or more but had to leave earlier than intended). The average goes up to 17 months for
the 11 years since we had kids.
In America I have a more complicated relationship with
home and all the expectations around it.
In 2009 we returned from Vietnam to the US to live, doing that
deliberately for the first time as a family. We bought a house near Atlanta, letting
ourselves imagine that it might be our “forever” home. We chose it because we
loved it best of the dozens of houses we looked at, with its quirky oldness and
a modern angular addition. It has a big
backyard and friendly neighbors on all sides.
After three years there, longer than any place I’ve lived
since childhood, a layoff forced a move to San Francisco and I swore I’d never
want to own a house again, wished we’d never bought that house in the first
place. We moved to duplex in a park, a neighborhood
of drab rentals down the hill from some of the most expensive mansions in the
city. Where before I used to eye others’
houses and imagine what it would be like if I lived there, now I was thoroughly
and fiercely not envious of their posh permanence, their views and landscaping.
Nine months into San Francisco, I wrote this: I know my way around, enough
that I only turn on my GPS about once a month or so. I've been through
the honeymoon phase, when I loved it so much I thought it hurt, and the hating
phase, when I was done with this traffic-clotted unfriendly place, and now I
nearly feel like I'm home. A couple of friends lately have gently
suggested that it may be time to put down roots. I politely decline, at
least to put down the kinds of roots they're thinking of. I used to think
that the ultimate goal was to get a house and plant a garden and make it all
beautiful and cozy and welcoming. We tried that in Georgia and for a
number of reasons it was a colossal mistake.
I would walk the loop around the rim of the watershed above
our house and try to resist loving the greenery and the view and the herons
hunting frogs and gophers. I
resisted as hard as I loved it, because after Georgia I couldn’t trust I would
get to keep it.
I was right. One early
morning in June, a year and a half after driving in over the Bay Bridge, the
kids and I left over the Golden Gate Bridge as we headed East towards Qatar-
driving across the US and then flying over to the other side of the world.
Our second night out on our drive west, we stayed in a house
belonging to a friend from grad school.
After a day of driving across the barren wasteland of northern Nevada and
then the even more barren wasteland of Utah salt flats, their house and the
lushly green avenues of Salt Lake City were a welcoming oasis. Their house had
a beautiful balance of history and home and child-friendliness that reminded
me, for the first time since we left GA, that owning and living in a house
indefinitely could be something positive.
And now we’re talking about selling our house in Georgia.
Living as an expat makes it easier to get my mind around the concept of
multiple homes and suddenly I’m not sure I want to get rid of the house that
just a year ago I wished had never been bought. Do I hate that we are giving up
a great house in a sweet neighborhood because I have duped myself into buying
into the mythical American dream, that I should own a house in the US in order
to feel settled? Or is it just that
given our history and the slight but real precariousness of living abroad, I want
to have a safe haven in my home country, where I know I can stay if we have to
return before we’re ready? I’ll surely come around to the idea of selling, I of all people
should understand that it’s not up to any of us to define home for other people
or even for ourselves.
I don’t love Qatar. I appreciate the experiences I’m having and I love moments but I don’t want to make peace with the forces underlying our existence here. Doha represents so much of what I distrust about modern humanity- the total manipulation of environment, the dependence on fossil fuels, the lack of local resources for so much of what we eat and use every day, the highly divided class/employment system. And despite all that, for now, it’s home. I hope that all
this moving is teaching my kids that home isn’t a thing with fixed boundaries,
outside of which everything is strange and fearsome. I’d like to think they
will understand that home is something you choose, that it’s a feeling of
familiarity with your environment, any place you can relax into your best self,
and that even the most unlikely places can feel like home.
beautiful. really beautiful. making me deeply contemplate the same idea of home but on the opposite spectrum of craving the change, the desire to settle into a new place, to expose my children new cultures. I'm exhausted by the american dream of staying put in a house in a western world. with that said i worry what comes with shuffling kids around too much and to be honest what you do i'm sure is so exhausting. But i wish that upon myself. we'll see what is to come. your insight is incredibly valuable.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Laura! Yes, it is exhausting, for sure. Shuffling the kids is some concern but they will make their own ways regardless of what we do, and the so-called stability of staying in one place may be more illusory than we realize. I look forward to following how this plays out for you and your family!
DeleteI get it. Last year, we sold finally sold our 'home' after 12 years of not living in it. It was a confusion of emotions: relief that I was no longer responsible (physically and financially) for the care and maintenance of a sprawling 16th century vicarage, sadness that we were losing our physical link to our past (my daughter was born in the master bedroom) and guilt that we were finally acknowledging to the community that we wouldn't be back.
ReplyDeleteWe have (and will probably continue to have) other homes as we move, but I have gradually realized that the bricks and mortar matter less and less, and my connections matter more. Instead of investing in furnishings, I invest time staying connected, everything from letters, cards and emails to Google Hangouts and Skype. My sense of identity is nurtured electronically rather than physically, but it works for me. And most importantly, it provides stability, when there is very little.
Yes, that's a good point about how other kinds of connection and community replace the physical things that ground us in a long-term home. We got rid of all of our furniture on the last move, renting a locker just big enough for our art and our camping gear and a few boxes of memorabilia. It was a hard process of letting go but now that we've done it, it's been interesting how our lives have filled up without it, and how I rarely think of the things we gave away or left behind. Our friends from various homes, on the other hand, are still full in my mind and heart and I am thankful for the electronic connection that makes that possible.
DeleteAmanda still sleeps on Emmet's old bed every night. I think of you every time I use your cast iron frying pan. We enjoy your old books all the time, often re-enjoying them repeatedly.
ReplyDeleteSo I guess even those concrete things can sometimes be connections from afar. Hmm, nice new thought to ponder :-)
Lada
It's time I stopped thinking of our great SF purge as "getting rid of things." It's more a passing on, really. I love that Amanda sleeps on Emmett's bed- I bought it from a Swedish family when they left Dhaka, but also knew the cane factory that it came from. And so happy our frying pan is making delicious things in your home! Yes "things" do serve help keep us connected, thank you for the reminder!
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