“Write a short story (600 – 1000 words) that describes your sense of home; write about the values and the stories that you use to connect yourself to, and to identify your sense of home.”

Canada was not truly home. At least, it wasn’t at first.

Canada was the place where my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins lived. It was the name stamped on the front of my passport and pictured on each of its pages. It was the anthem I sang loudly and with all my might during the International day fair at school, when the red and white flag was carried down the centre of the gymnasium by fellow Canadian students. It was the pride I felt in telling others where I had come from whenever someone asked.

But it was not home, and hadn’t been for the 9 years I lived overseas.

My family had been back in Canada for six months. It was a permanent move. We stood in the basement of my grandparents house, my mom holding my brother and I in her arms as we stared in disbelief at our shipment of moving boxes that my dad had sent from overseas. Every cardboard box was stained and sagged and struggling to stay together. The items inside were in worse condition. Our clothes that had been shipped were musty and moldy and went straight into a garbage bag. The skins of my brother’s hand drums were yellowed and flaking and could not be fixed. Books were unreadable, toys in pieces, art my mom cherished were ruined. My mom broke down in tears as we took the garbage bags full of what had been parts of our “home” for our nine years in Qatar, to the curb by the road. She cried again as we piled most of what had made the journey safely in to storage because it was my grandparents house – their home.

It was not something we could make ours.

Two years later, my mom had saved enough money to buy a house. We stood in the entry way of a stranger’s home. It had on display the absolute minimum: no decorations, no personalization; the perfect house for showing. My mom and the real estate agent talked back and forth.

“This is a three bedroom, 3 and a half bath with a finished basement.”

“The floors are really nice.”

“Yes, they are real slate. Look how nicely they match with the walls.”

We walked through each room of the house and my mom continued to ask questions about the condition of the carpeting, how many cars the garage could fit, and on and on. After looking at the master bedroom, my mom asked me which of the remaining two I would want. Of course I chose the larger one (since I was the oldest child and therefore always deserved the bigger room) but it was just a room with ugly blue walls and a closet with a semi-broken door.

It was a home, but it wasn’t mine.

The September after my graduation from high school, we stood by the window in my dorm room barely large enough for the three of us, and I gave both of my parents a large hug each while my mom balled her eyes out after finally realizing I would not be returning “home” with them. We had unpacked all of my worldly belongings from the car and dragged them up two flights of stairs to the room that would be mine for the next eight months – my “home”. My mom had stayed to help me decorate a little, make the room a little more inviting, while my dad had gone to get us lunch. And at the end, when the boxes were mostly empty, my mom had started to cry and cry and cry. I joked that it was because she had to deal with my dad and brother by herself now and would be the only sane one left in the house. She laughed, but continued weeping until they were well into their drive back to our family house. I returned to my room, my room that would be my “home” (as the university resident advisors had cheerily reminded me as I moved into the building).

But it wouldn’t be my home.

I moved from house to house, from city to city, from country to country for ten years of my life. Each house, each place was never “home” like it is for people who grew up in the same place for a large portion of their life. A house was never my root. It never had the opportunity to be. My family though, were always there, in each new house and each new place.

My brother and I, growing up, we referred to hotel rooms as “home”. It seems like a weird concept, calling a hotel room you are living in for a week your home, but it was always the same as moving to a new house for us. Its not the location, but the familiar, and our familiar lived in our family.

Home will always be where my mom and dad and brother are.

References:

Curiano.com. “Home is not a place…its a feeling.” Curiano.com. n.p. Web. 28 Jan. 2019. Retrieved from https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/103160647693385111/

Faye, Ndela. “Am I rootless or am I free? ‘Third Culture Kids’ like me make it up as we go along.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited. 9 March. 2016. Web. 27 Jan. 2019. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/09/third-culture-kid-identity-different-cultures

Langley, Brianna. “Third Culture Kids Part 2: What it Means to Come Home.” Team. n.p. 22 May. 2018. Web. 27 Jan. 2019. Retrieved from https://team.org/blog/third-culture-kids-what-it-means-to-come-home