With most of my first cousins, parents, dad’s siblings (and their husbands/wives) and my grandma! Woo! Big family!

She had been dreaming of this day. At long last, she would be leaving home and the rigid constraints she had so deeply detested. “Do this. Do that. Where are you? Come home, it’s late!”  The words rang in her head as she unpacked her belongings. The room was empty, except for a tiny loft bed in one corner and a barren desk in another. “It looks dreary but I’ll dress it up. This is my new home and it’s going to be perfect”, she thought to herself. She sat there for a bit, realizing she had moved in much earlier than anyone else on the sixth floor of Dene. An hour later, the dresser was organized. Her closet was full of hanging clothes. A few knick-knacks sat atop the once barren desk. Posters of “inspirational people” stared back at her from every wall. Voices drifted down the hallway and finally, she was ready to meet the floor mates with whom she would be making this place her “home”.

Minutes turned to hours, and the sun was setting while girls waved goodbye to their parents and other family members. She had asked her parents to let her move in on her own. She could do it. She was mature now. She would be living alone, after all. She looked over at the girls waving goodbye and quickly averted her eyes.  A deep breath followed and then she was off with her new friends. There remained a pit in her stomach even while she excitedly got to know the other girls. She ignored it, telling herself it was the anxiety of all these amazing new experiences. She had barely slept the day prior. She was too eager, too ready get out of North Delta. “All I need is a good rest and this weird feeling in my stomach will be a mere memory” she muttered to herself.

The day had come and gone. It was nearing 2 a.m. She noticed a missed call on her cell phone from her mom but by now, her mom was probably fast asleep. The building was silent and dark. She opened the door to her room and looked down the long hallway. No lights were on. Everyone was probably fast asleep, except for her. The pit in her stomach had not gone away and she was especially aware of it now that she sat atop her bed with nothing but silence ringing in her ears. It felt like the silence was growing around her. The pit in her stomach was growing. She decided to lie down and pulled the covers over herself, reaching underneath to grab at something she realized she had forgotten. Princess G… where was Princess G? The pink stuffed kitten she had gotten nearly fifteen years ago was nowhere to be found. She balled up a pillow and pulled it close, hugging it tightly. Eventually, she closed her eyes and tried to drift off to sleep like the rest of the world.

As she lay there, the silence was overcome by the voices in her head. No, relax, she was not losing her mind. She thought of her mom, gentle and kind but stern when the need be, standing in the doorway of her bedroom in North Delta. “You look like you’re going to doze off”, she would say every night after they told one another about their days. She would then say a quick “I love you, good night” and head down the hallway toward her own bedroom. She opened her eyes and glanced toward the door, almost confident the voice was not just in her head. The door was closed and the room was empty, of course. The pit in her stomach continued to grow. She felt like a knot was forming in her chest. She closed her eyes again and pictured herself sitting on the couch in her home. Not this “home”, not her new “home”. In her mind, she was at home in North Delta; the town she had so desperately wanted to escape. She reveled in the comfort of the couch. Her grandmother was in the next room, making tea. Moments later, they were both seated firmly on the couch, drinking tea and laughing about something funny her dad had said the day before. He was always saying funny things and spewing out the most random bits of information. Did you know, for example, that chess originated in India? “Why are you telling me this at 7 in the morning?” She would say to whatever tidbit he was sharing before he rushed off to work. “The more you know, the more you grow” He would respond. She smiled to herself, feeling the memories rush through; engulfing her in their warmth. That night, she finally did manage to drift off to sleep, dreaming about her parents’ cooking, the feel of her bed in North Delta and the chats with her mom before bed. School was not to start for a couple more days, but she had been eager to move in as early as possible to settle into her new home. The next morning, she got on the 99 B-Line and, much to her own surprise, headed back toward North Delta. At first, her parents looked incredulous and asked if everything was alright or if she had forgotten something important. She looked up at them and apologized profusely for being so eager to leave them all behind. As she was leaving, the pit began to form in her stomach again. Her parents hugged her tightly. She was about to leave when her mom called her name. “You forgot something” her mom said, holding Princess G in her hands.

She was back on the Skytrain, a little piece of home in her hand. “Dene will become a home away from home, in time…” she thought to herself. As she sat there, she began to think of the words from one of her favourite songs. “Home is wherever I’m with you…” she hummed quietly. The song was a romantic song, but the “you” took on a different meaning for her. The “you” was family. No matter how much she would grow to love Dene, she knew that at the root of it all home was with her family and the memories and spaces they filled in together.

This short story tells the tale of my first foray into the world of (partial) independence and moving away from home to live on campus at UBC. Although North Delta is not that far away from UBC and the trek home was actually quite simple, I will never forget the feelings of nostalgia that haunted me when I moved into Dene. After living there for the duration of the year and making close friends and special memories, however, I found that I was haunted with a similar (but lesser) nostalgia and pit in my stomach when it came time to leave. These feelings of sadness were likely muted by the knowledge that I was going back to a place full of love, memories and family. Despite the happy times I had in Dene, I always thought of it as my “home away from home”, never as the “home” that I felt most attached to. It is these feelings and the paramount value of family that, I believe, defines home for me.

Works Cited:

“Origins of Chess.” Princeton University. Web. 30 Jan. 2015. <http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Origins_of_chess.html>.