To Be Home

5 weeks till I go home. I use the term rather loosely, when asked the other day where home was, I said it was here, because I was here. I've called my best friend's house home, even though I don't live there, but I spend more time there than in my little room. Home is my aunt and uncle's place in Apeldoorn, if I'm visiting them. Home is a very fluid term, usually tied to where I and my passport reside.

Yet as I look forward to going home, or the place where my mother and brother live, I am also struggling not to focus on 9 weeks from now. It is then that I'll be leaving home. Leaving to return home, paradoxical as that may seem. I can almost anticipate what it will be like, a short night, all my souvenirs carefully packed and ready to go, rushing out the front door of North Hall, and then driving the empty early morning streets to the airport whilst praying earnestly, Please let me come back home. It's a prayer I pray every time I leave. Somehow the memory of 18 years ago still hasn't resolved itself with the reality that I am here and here is home now.

I watched a short CBC clip the other day. I don't often watch 5+ minute clips all the way through when I'm scrolling through Facebook, as my attention and patience span are limited. This one, though, had me in tears. The one phrase I heard held my heart. She's my home. A young couple, deeply in love, from opposite sides of the continent. He had found his home in her.

It's something I dream of, when I find myself restless, rootless, and uncertain whether I can stay in this country or that. The worlds where I am permitted to reside without question or visas are foreign to me. The places I find myself feeling at home query why I should feel such a strong attachment to them when they never claimed me as their own. It's the conundrum the TCK-grown-up must always face. Yet perhaps one day I too, will be able to find my home in the heart of one who understands I no longer need to travel to be home.