Home Alone No More

"One small cat changes coming home to an empty house to coming home"

-Pam Brown

My brother will be flying in tomorrow and I am ecstatic!  It will be the first time since Christmas that my family will be all together at HOME.  Sometimes I forget how long I go without seeing everyone.  It just goes to show that life is changing.  Slowly but surely, we’re branching out in different directions, to different area codes of the world. 

Modern Day Dorothy
Definitely not in Kansas anymore
johigginsillustration.com

No matter how far we go, It’s nice that we can still gather like this under one roof again, just like old times.  Life is about to get a little bit happier.

Well, I stumbled upon this old piece of writing from my first experience coming back to an empty house while in college.  Looking back on it, I think it is a nice little piece that reminds me of what I think is most important about a HOME…so I’m sharing it here.  Hope you like it!

Home Alone: The Reality

The warm smells of food, the animated laughs of my family, the late night movies snuggled under blankets. The long political conversations flowing from the living room, the fights with my sister about clothes she “borrowed” from me, and slipping the dogs pieces of steak under the table at dinner time while my parents weren’t looking.  All such happy memories, but this time when I was expecting it, it was all gone.

They were gone - a million miles away in the Philippines with the rest of my extended family.  I would have gone too if I had more than a weekend off, but instead, here I was, standing in the middle of my disorganized room.  The sun shooting through the shades, as I stood there, cold, in silence.  The only noise within earshot was the gentle buzzing of my neighbor’s lawnmower.   It was 10 o’clock in the morning.   By now, someone would have called me down for breakfast.  The smell of warm rice and sausages would have carried me out of bed.  I didn’t hear music, no coffee machine, no talking at all.  My parents were always early risers.  Something just wasn’t right. 

Looking back on it now, it wasn’t until I left home for college when I actually realized how much I missed home.  During my first semester in Madrid, Spain, I flew home for the weekend whenever I felt the longing for my mom’s home cooking.  Every time I felt the loneliness from being on my own in a big city, I bought a plane ticket home.  It was my form of therapy – flying home.  At my luxury, I lived close enough to do that without going bankrupt, but what really made me realize what coming home meant to me, I had to experience coming back to an empty house without my family after three years of college.

As I stand at the edge of my bed, I notice the giant bucket of shoes that my sister and I usually leave in our closet chaotically toppled over in the middle of the room.  I step over piles of clothes strewn across the floor to get to it.  “This is nothing new,” I think to myself.  She and I always got into fights over how messy the room always was.  The years we shared a room I always felt like I was cleaning up after her.  After I moved out, I would only come back to find the room in even more disorder than the last time I had visited.  This time was no different. To my surprise, instead of feeling angry, I just felt sad. I actually missed her, even if we would be arguing by now.  All the clothes on the floor made me think of how she must have left in a rush.

I make my way downstairs, walking through the cluttered living room.  I feel the sudden urge to clean something or “spruce up” as my mother would say.  Actually, if she were here now, it’s exactly what she would do - (or tell me to do).

I spend the next three hours cleaning the house.  Washing undone dishes, fluffing pillows, folding laundry left on the dining table, organizing things that were flung around in the craziness to catch a flight to some paradise a million miles away, but the more I picture my family leaving the home we made, the more sad I feel.  I would think to myself, "if only they were here right now…"

I am comforted by the smell of my mother’s perfume in my parents’ room.  It almost feels like she’s here.  Golf balls left under the couch cushions remind me of my dad as he practices his golf swing around the house, my sister’s Nikes remind me of how loud she blasts her music at night, and as I dust the piano keys, the sound takes me back to a time when I would sit on the couch and listen to my brother play Fur Elise or Ballad for Adeline.  It was all so comforting – almost as if they were actually here.

The feeling is bittersweet. As I sit looking at the unfinished laundry and all my family’s stuff, I feel their presence and it’s comforting - but it hurts.  I guess it rings true that someone has to be gone for you to miss them, but for them to be gone in a place where I feel we should be together is even worse.  Why was this trip home so unusual?  I am home aren’t I?  Where am I?

Why, I’m home of course.  That’s why I came here, right?  Because it’s home!  But how could this place be home when home has meant something different than what I am feeling at this moment?  I feel alone whereas coming home has always meant excitement, rambunctious playfulness, good conversation, and affection.  Where was I now?

What is home?  For some, it is a country, a state, a city, a house.   But for my family, I realize it never was any of those.  I remember when my brother used to write beneath his name in the yearbook under the field labeled “Hometown.”  “I am my hometown,” he would write.  At the time I didn’t understand what he meant, but as I grew older, my sense of home became more or less the same.  For me, the saying “home is where your heart is” rang true in every way.

Since I was born, my family has become accustomed to moving a lot.  From country to country, from house to house, I moved with my family, making new friends as I went.  As the majority of my life has been centered around change, after a while, everything seemed to take on a sense of impermanence. 

My sense of permanence began to develop when my family bought a house in the south of the Netherlands, where my family has been for about eight years now.  Going back there, no matter where I go, always seemed to make me feel better.

But as I was in the house where I felt so permanent now, why didn’t I feel better?  I was away from the big city, I was back in my old room, my big comfy bed, I had the house all to myself, this was the place I could truly call my own, but at the same time, I didn’t want it to be only my own, I wanted to share it with someone.  I wanted my family back.  In what I felt was going to be a relaxing trip back “home”, I felt aggravated, lonely, and preoccupied.  It was then when I truly realized that it is people, not the place that makes coming back worthwhile.

As I sit on the plane back to Madrid, I think of my next trip back.  The thought of seeing my family again always cracks a smile on my face.  Falling asleep to the humming of the engine, a scene from a popular movie comes to mind.  “Click your heels three times…there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home…”

I couldn’t agree more.

A Note for the Lost Ones...

It's our senses that set us free

So caught up in things that don’t matter

Things we should leave behind

Things that oppress our mind.

Beyond Your Average Beach Experience. Oh Yes.

Thousands have lived without LOVE

Not one without WATER

-- W.H. Auden

I recently went on a study trip to Alicante/Valencia for an Oceanography course I took this summer.  It was definitely one of the most enjoyable and relaxing trips I have taken for a class and I really learned a lot.  If you don’t believe me, just read my journal which I have transcribed to the internet from my little scrapbook/journal that I took with me to the field.  All you’re missing here on my blog, are my cute drawings and diagrams of things I saw, but I’m sure your imagination can span the possibilities of my artistic talent. ;D

Enjoy!

July 23, 2010

We’re going north to the aquarium from La Mata in la comunidad de Valencia.  Spain has 17 comunidades.  We are going to Santa Pola.  On the bus ride there, we pass by a lot of strange Chinese restaurants and buildings with very unique architecture.  Many structures are being developed or are in a dilapidated state.  I wonder why.

We’re passing a salt mine right now.  Salt is important for our clothing and for food preservation, among other things.  In the salt marshes we see flamingos.  My professor tells us that there are many migratory birds that pass through here.  Therefore, it is very important to maintain this environment because there are not that many stops they can make from and to the north of Africa.  The flamingos we pass are white and not pink, apparently because they’re babies. J They start out white then turn pink as they eat the red crustaceans in the water.  It makes sense.

Snorkeling at Isla de Tabarca…

When we go snorkeling, the water is warm.  The scariest part isn’t encountering the fish, it is swimming through sea grass and ingesting the sea water.  I always thought that something was going to pop out and bite me, since we learn that this vegetation is home to so many sea creatures.  Anyway, I didn’t get bitten by anything, but I saw a bunch of cool fish of so many shapes, sizes, and colors.  I also saw some urchins and dead crabs.
We went to eat after snorkeling for a bit.  I felt really gross after swimming, like everyone else who dipped in the seawater.  We found some showers though, and made our way to explore the town.  There wasn’t that much to see and we ended up eating at some touristy place – something we were trying to avoid.  I got a plate of different fish.  I wanted to try Fideua (like paella, but with noodles instead of rice) but the menu was for at least 2 people.  Oh well.

One of the coolest parts of the day was when we visited the fish auction.  We got to see how the fish are sold and the value and demand for certain kinds of catch.  For example, the red shrimps were selling for a lot of money.  It was interesting to see how the fish get from the fishing boats to our restaurant plates.  Supermarkets like Carrefour, Hipercor, Corte Ingles, and restaurants come to buy the fish/seafood.  A biologist is present to identify the species beforehand, and the prices are assigned to those fish as the selling price of the day before, except multiplied by 5.  Then the price starts to sink downwards until a buyer decides to press a button on a remote control looking device which indicates that they want to buy the species.  Then, a number is put inside the tray with the catch, and at the end of the conveyor belt, the fish are sorted into stacks for each individual buyer.  It seems like a pretty good system.  It is efficient enough, but what do I know about fisheries and the fish markets?  It’s the first time I’ve seen anything like this!

July 24, 2010

Today we got to the coast to kayak and sail.  We started to go to visit a submarine, but it was closed, so we went straight to this nautical club to start kayaking and sailing.  I went sailing first.  It was nice to sail with someone who has sailed before.  I got to learn some sailing terminology like port, starboard, boom, and rudder, among other terms.  I’ve heard the terms before, but never have I ever gotten to use them.  At first, sailing seemed really difficult and complicated, but then it became more clear.  When sailing, we are pretty much trying to use the wind to get to where we want to go.  Just knowing the direction of the wind and how to catch it (or not catch it) in the sail seems to be the trick.  Sailing doesn’t seem like such a daunting task anymore.  After sailing out for a while, the boy accompanying us, Gorka, has us jump out of the boat to get to the kayaks.  The thought of jumping out into the open sea really scares me, but since everyone else was doing it, I just jumped in too.  It wasn’t so bad.  The water was pretty warm and the kayaks weren’t too far away.  I have a lot of fear of the ocean and the sea.  I’m not really sure why, but it could have something to do with all the horror nature movies about “crazy” sea animals.  The sea/ocean is all so unknown to me and to man in general – relative to how much we know about the land.  In the past I’ve always read up about sea animals, however I’m not so convinced that it makes me any less afraid/watchful/paranoid.  In general though, I think learning about the environmental processes and marine biology at least makes us more knowledgeable and more able to make rational decisions about what we’re experiencing.  An example is how we use our knowledge of oceanography to explain the things we see on this trip.

While sailing, I didn’t seen any fish at all, but I did see a lot of birds.  I saw mostly seagulls, but out of all the birds I saw, I was fascinated by one kind of bird that was much smaller and faster than a seagull.  I was watching it hunt, but couldn’t get a close enough look at it to identify it.  So, as I was saying, hardly any fish were visible from the boat, but this bird was sharp enough to see all the fish from the sky, and was able to dive in to catch them.  The seagulls didn’t do much except sit on the water and hang out in groups, just people watching, or whatever they do.  The seagulls I saw today were rather tranquil compared to the ones I’ve seen before.  I always thought seagulls were rather vicious, as my past experiences have shown me that they always seem to want to take your food or squawk at you, but these ones just sat and stared.  The last time I had contact with seagulls was in Zeeland, the Netherlands.  I was hiking with friends until a swarm of seagulls covered the sky and blessed us with a truckload of their beautiful white fecal matter.  Needless to say, that experience left a bad taste in my mouth…not literally, but seagulls are not my favorite animals, by a long shot.  My kayaking partner, Maja was telling me that in her native Croatia, men who bother and harass women often are called seagulls.  There must be a good reason…I didn’t know seagulls were really considered pests.

We pulled up to the port after kayaking all the way from the sailboat.  It was a good workout.  My arms are still a little sore.

We ate lunch at club nautico where we got our sandwiches.  I didn’t really like my sandwich too much, so I ate part of my friend Adrien’s vegetarian option.  My sandwich was something with tuna and tomatoes.  I had decided that since I was on the coast this weekend, I was going to eat seafood the whole time, but I just couldn’t down this one for some reason.  So, yes, it was nice of him to share his food with me.

He left shortly after lunch to take part in the Regatta that was starting around 4 P.M. since he is a more experienced sailor.  He had a great time and his boat ended up getting seventh place out of…I don’t know how many.  This is a good example of how the sea/ocean is used by humans for recreation.
Today we also learned about blue flag status beaches.  It means that the beach holds high quality standards - that the water is clean, the living species are well-protected, and therefore, the city can use this status to promote their area.  I believe I have seen quite a few blue flag beaches.  One of them was in the south of Spain near Marbella.  I don’t remember that particular beach being anything special though.  The best and most memorable beach I have ever been to was on the island of Boracay in the Philippines.  The waters were so clear and the sand was like white powder.  I’m not sure how artificial it is though.  If the beach is artificial, does it still get blue flag status?

The vegetation in the artificial and natural beaches we visited on this trip were notably different.  The ones in the natural beach dunes seemed better adapted, unlike the invasive (yet beautiful) plant life we saw in the restored one.  The dunes by Las Salinas were interesting.  This one type of tree we passed looked dead and bent over on one side, yet green on the other.  It doesn’t live off the salty moisture, but still survives.  The natural dunes seemed more lush and had more brush, while the “artificial” dunes were more shrubby.  One obviously protects better than the other against the erosion and damage to the coastal environment.

July 25, 2010

We’re on our way to Murcia from La Mata.  We go to Las Salinas, as we are seeing the natural formation of wetland marshes.  The process starts with a volcanic island, then the sediments get trapped, and the wetlands are formed.  As I said before, wetland areas like this are very important because they serve as stop-overs for migratory birds.  These wetlands, Las Salinas and Mar Menor are formed the same way.  In the educational center for Las Salinas, we learned a lot.  One of the most interesting things I saw was a model of las encanizadas.  The model showed us one of the first natural inlets for fishing.  It had a number of trap doors with bars that would let in the water and let out the water, but not the fish.  It is pretty ingenious and I don’t think it took much effort to get dinner - as it really is just passive fishing.  It’s not like line fishing where you have to sit there forever and reel the line in when a fish bites, but instead, the fish just swim in with the current and accumulate in these cages on the shore.  It is a sustainable way of fishing and marked the beginning of mariculture.  This closely resembles the cages for fishing out in the ocean today.

We also look at a number of shells.  Monica, our professor, reminded us of the three molluska, which all have shells.  We saw a sepia (squid) shell.  Sepia is a cephalopod.  The other two types are gastropods and bivalves.  In the sepia, she was showing us the shell and how the creature would pump air inside for buoyancy control…hmm...did not know that.

Then we went on this long walk to look at birds and pick up trash on the way.  This lady from the educational center told us we would receive a certificate for picking up trash.  The "certificates" were never given to us, but our group did pick up a lot of trash and made littering onlookers feel real guilty.  I guess, even if we didn't get a pat on the back or a piece of paper, everything has a purpose.
Anyway, both picking up trash and bird watching in the sweltering heat were pretty difficult tasks.   The birds were so far away that we needed binoculars to look at them closely – and the trash…well, my partner did most of that (and it’s not because I don’t care about the beaches and environment and all…I just have a bad cut on my finger and don’t want to infect it with any strange bacteria found in salt marsh trash – you never know.)  What I DID get to do was pretty cool though, like see flamingos, blood worms in water samples, and natural vegetation on a natural beach.  The beach was pretty wonderful – the death march TO the beach, er, not so much, although it was very educational.  I have to say, walking alongside the marshes, I noticed the water looked pretty nasty most of the way to the beach.  As we walked closer to the beach, the water changed to a range of different colors.  The water turned to a mix of sudsy, green, murky water to something closer to lemon Gatorade.  I wonder why the water turned those different colors and what exactly was in the water to make it that way.

When we finally got to the beach and got to relax, it was great.  I felt like a kid again (Not that I’m THAT old or anything).  The reward was even sweeter because it took so long to walk there.  Apparently, the beach was purposefully out of reach of the roads and civilization because it is environmentally better for the beach.  Other than because we would miss out on a great educational experience, this is the reason we had to walk instead of being driven by bus.  We learned that building beachfront houses, jetties, and other structures so close to the beach really messes up the ecosystem.  As far as dune restoration goes, it was really fascinating to differentiate the good and bad dune restoration techniques.  I’m just going to talk about the walkways, which we saw were good if they were on little stilts, and bad if they were on something like concrete.  It’s stupid that in some areas, they still keep the walkways on concrete KNOWING that it ruins the coast - but they're probably holding off changing those past mistakes because it would be too tedious or would cost additional money.  I think in the long run, these uncorrected mistakes actually cost us more, not only economically speaking.

Later, we went to Mar Menor.  In 1996, it became a regional park and for this reason, it is able to receive funds from the European Union to improve and protect it.  Yay for money. 

July 27, 2010

Conclusion

The most difficult part of environmentalism isn’t making plans and figuring in what ways we can help save our world – it is convincing the average person to actually act on those plans and change their everyday way of life which may actually be detrimental to the environment.

That means that to help save our oceans and seas and the creatures that depend on their well being (yes, that includes us), then we need to change the way we live, and at least know how our actions and new expansions affect the environment.

So we should ask ourselves, what is our role in keeping oceans in tact and as balanced as possible?  If we want to answer this question in a contemporary context, we must also think about and discuss how we can make technological, agricultural, and maricultural advances while keeping the oceans relatively undisturbed.  Is this even possible?  I often wonder about this.

We tend to think the ocean is so vast that the larger impact of our smaller actions often goes unnoticed.  We must work to know exactly how we impact the earth and secondly, how we can get people to care about the earth when the effects are not immediately visible.  As Monica says, it is easier to protect something you can see, rather than something you can’t, like the seas and oceans.

Maybe I’m going off on a bit of a tangent, but this concept reminds me of our oceanography class in regards to skincare.  When we first came to Alicante, everyone was so ready for the sun and to get a tan.  Nobody, not even I was worried about skincare.  It wasn’t a real threat until after the first day when every single one of us got toasted.  The second day after our very painful showers, a day wouldn’t go by without us having a long session of slathering on gobs of heavy duty sunscreen.  Only after we saw and felt the effects did we start caring about our home (our own skin).  I’m still dealing with the effects of that sunburn to this day.  It’s the same way with the environment.  When we feel it economically or physically we start caring, but not beforehand, when it counts.

So, in the end, these environmental problems arise when we try to balance our industrialized civilization, our business culture, and leisure activities with our limited food sources and environment.  How can you get people to believe that they’re fishing too much?  How can you get people to take wildlife over money?  Is it possible that humans will be able to appreciate marine life as living creatures instead of just resources we can use and exploit?  The same goes for our earth. Will we rob it naked or will we find a balanced way to appreciate it?

We have come a long way in studying our coasts and trying to maintain a balanced ecosystem on Earth.  We will see where our efforts lead…