Sunday, August 3, 2014

Home is...where?

We recently returned from a trip to the US and Canada. At the US/Canadian border I was asked where we live. In the past I probably would have answered "Nebraska", since we receive mail there and that's what our driver's licenses say. I've even put "US" on the line for "Country of Residence" on the immigration forms for the last couple of years. (I hope that admission doesn't get me in trouble with those government agencies that are trolling the web for terrorists).
However, I decided that honesty was no more complex than ambiguity and just said, "Honduras", whenever the question arose.
Honestly, this has only added to a problem I've experience for years. Where am I from? Where is home?
In the frequently changing international and expatriate community where we live it is a frequent question, "Where are you from originally?" I usually semi-deflect the question by saying, "My mother." This rarely puts people completely off the topic so I say that it's kind of complicated. At this stage in my life I'm not really sure where "home" is. What are the options?

  • Well, I was born in Buffalo, NY and lived 13 or so of my first 18 years there. (We had a 5 year sojourn in Florida). But, I haven't lived in NY since then, really, and my parents no longer live there. (Besides, they left my childhood home when I was a freshman in college). 
  • My parents live in Nebraska and my wife's in New Jersey. That's fine, but except for a year we haven't really lived in Nebraska and my in-laws are in the same town but not Debbie's childhood home. Besides, who wants to say they're from New Jersey?
  • Then there's Wisconsin. We lived in Wisconsin for 14 years, the bulk of our married life so far. We have longstanding friendships and church relationship there. We try to visit when we can. But we have no family where we lived there, no official ties.
I suppose ours is a typical story nowadays.
There is a final option. We could be from here. Honduras could be home. From the beginning we have tried to live that way. The clearest evidence of this is that we brought most of our books. ("Where your treasure is there will your heart be also"?).
But as others here will tell you, it is difficult to speak of this as home. Not so much because we don't feel it is home but because others in our lives don't think of it that way. So when we are readying ourselves to return to Honduras after a visit in the states, we think and speak about "Going home." But our friends and relatives think we have just been home and are going back on a trip to Honduras. It is almost as if they regard our time in Honduras as an extended vacation, a long visit.
I just don't think that is a psychologically healthy option for us. This is where we are. This is where we are living and making life now. It is not vacation. It is not a trip. This is our life.
Will it always be this way? Probably not. We will someday move somewhere else, probably stateside. But not because it is home but in order to begin the processing of making it home.

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