We went home for the weekend. Home? I’m not actually sure if it’s the right word anymore.
We were there just over a month ago — my first time back since we moved — and while there I visited a friend.
“How does it feel to be home?” he asked. Then paused. “Is this home?”
We were sitting on the grass in the bright sunshine outside Starbucks. The shopping centre I had been to countless times hummed along, ignorant of my six months’ absence. I looked around.
“I don’t know.” I pondered. “I think so. Yes.”
But is it? I didn’t really feel that way when we got back to where home is now, at least in the literal our-house sense, and I have torn through the nuances of that question many times since.
Is home where we live? Or is it where I grew up?
Is it where my family is? Which part of my family?
Is it wherever I damn well say it is?
I have answers to none of those.
“We’re going home tonight,” we told Connor on the night we planned to leave. I pictured our current house, with the trim color we don’t like and plan to change, and our bedroom, which I love, with its new dark furniture.
That’s where my small but growing family resides. My mugs are in the cupboard and Connor’s toys are in the bath. My husband has nurtured the lawn. My dog has his spot, which, lately, is on the bath mat (whether someone else is using it or not).
My siblings are nearby – two of the three, anyway. My sister and her husband, after way too long being a province away, now live 20 minutes from us. My brother and sister-in-law are about to help double the head count of the next generation by bringing twin boys into our lives. (And if you think I’d miss the day-to-day of that, you’re nuts.)
But my parents are still where we left them, living in the same house they’ve been in since I was 19. Connor misses them, and every time they visit I’m reminded of how important it is for them to be part of his life.
This last trip back was for the 4th annual joint birthday party we have with four kids who have known each other since they were born. They are Connor’s friends, and he doesn’t know a life without them.
Except I suppose he does now, because they are no longer part of his everyday. He talks about them as though they are, though these comments are punctuated with heartbreaking missing-them statements and “Can K come over?” questions.
This year’s party was perfect. The weather co-operated and the kids enjoyed the slip ‘n’ slide, and there were only a few parental interventions required. We snacked, we drank (some of us more boring drinks than others), and if you had asked me if I wanted to stay in that backyard with those people forever I would have said yes.
But we have chosen to leave that backyard, both literally and metaphorically. I often question whether it was the right decision, and yet when I’m back in my hometown it doesn’t feel like home.
For the most part, I don’t miss the city. But I miss the people something fierce, as though a part of me were missing, and it has quite unexpectedly left me feeling homeless in a way I could never have anticipated.
