Home
“You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it’s all right.” ~Maya Angelou
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what “home” means. Am I at home right now, here in my lovely apartment in Wrocław, living with my friends? Would I feel more at home if I lived on my own? Or in a different city? Or is home really where my family is, hovering forever somewhere between my mother and grandmother in Des Moines?
I was recently back in Des Moines for Christmas, and one afternoon went to my mother’s office so she could parade me around for all her new work colleagues to meet. I know she’s just proud of me, so I didn’t mind much. Until one lady—the one I actually liked the most, the funniest one, the one with a barbed wit, the lone standout in a crowd of Christmas-sweatered PTA moms—asked me how long I was planning to stay. I answered, without much thought, “Oh, I’ll be going home on the 30th.” Without missing a beat, she asked, “So, is Poland home now?”
My initial reaction was, “Bitch, you don’t know me like that.” What kind of question is that to ask someone you’ve known for all of 10 minutes? Still, I had caught myself saying something similar earlier, and already had begun to work my way through this scary idea in my mind. Is Poland home now?
My first week home on this trip, I experienced something quite odd. I woke up in the middle of the night filled with anxiety and trepidation. Like I was in the wrong place, like I had started to separate myself from this old idea of home so materially that I no longer belonged there. I had to get out of bed and log onto Facebook to see what was going on out there in the world. Cruise around a little, read updates, check out links, shut my mind down for a bit. It’s absurd, but that calmed me enough to go back to sleep. The next day, the anxiety lingered for awhile, but eventually faded.
Unfortunately, it was immediately replaced by annoyance. In between jaunts to various shopping centers and restaurants, I felt annoyed by everything my mom said or asked, by every commercial that came on the TV that always seemed to be blaring in the background wherever I went. Everything was just pissing me off, for no concrete or justifiable reason. I began to feel like I shouldn’t even have come home.
After a week (and a week with no car access, so that might be the answer to the mystery right there), my mind began to settle, and I fell into familiar routines. I wasn’t so angry anymore. I enjoyed seeing my family and friends, and had a lovely Christmas weekend. I felt like I could stay forever. Not at my mom’s house, mind you, but somewhere in the States.
I spent some time shopping, and mostly just sighed my way around various stores, oohing and aahing over the ease with which every single little thing is available at one’s fingertips in America. If you have enough money, you can literally have anything you want at any time. It is, at once, gluttonous, horrifying, addictive, and fabulous. I love people, places, and experiences, but I also love things. I cannot lie. And there is absolutely no place better than America for providing you with the opportunity to acquire more things than you could ever possibly need.
In the end, I almost had a breakdown in a craft store (which was as big as a typical grocery store is here in Poland, with a wondrous variety that could only be dreamed of in Europe). I just wanted all the cute things I saw, for projects I would love to start (and likely never finish, typically). I had a similar reaction when grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s, surrounded by such high quality and diverse food. Likewise at Williams-Sonoma, where I would have bought every piece of kitchen gadgetry in the place had I an unlimited shipping budget.
By living here, I have voluntarily given up access to a lifestyle that I love, with my favorite things at my fingertips. Of course, I’ve traded it for a different lifestyle, one that ultimately has more culture, more depth, and more bang for the buck, as it were. But I want it all. I can’t have it all, but I want it, nonetheless. I doubt that these two worlds will ever fully merge; I would be a little sad if they did, to be honest. I want my European culture with better shopping, but I doubt that can be had without all the shitty commercials for things like Shake Weights and Extenze, massive parking lots that seem to stretch for miles, and the lack of perspective on how lucky we are to live in a place where we have the luxury of taking it all for granted.
Week three, my last, made me start feeling a little itchy to get back to Poland. Back to my own bed, back to trams and school and beautiful buildings, back to autonomy. I was sad to be leaving my family behind. I hardly ever get to see my brother, my father has gotten dramatically older (and sicker), and my grandmother is starting to show her age as never before. I hate that she cries when I leave and begs me to stay. I hate to think I’m causing her pain by simply following my own path.
In this, I know that Des Moines will always be home as long as my family is there. But, I think it’s possible to have more than one place that we can call home. Home is where my cat sleeps on the windowsill, where my books sit in stacks, where my pots and pans are waiting to be used, and home will always be where I lay my head on 600 thread-count sheets.
