-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.
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| 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…”
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