Sense of Place - June 25 2022

 

Sense of Place

June 25 2022

It's hard to know

what home is

except that you miss it so much.

Is homesickness

a matter of geography?

Is it food

language

customs?

Is it street life

and the late summer sun,

mom's home cooking

your mother tongue?

Or is it people,

those you grew up with

those related by blood?

This feeling of anomie, and displacement

that never goes away.

Forever a stranger

in a strange land,

despite the warm welcome

and mementos of home.

How even before birth

we're imprinted with it.

The muffled voice

you heard in the womb,

the salty edge

to the first breath you took,

the smell of local dishes

simmering on the grill.

Because it's in our nature

to sink our roots

into native soil

and have a sense of place.

Like salmon

we seek to return.

Like salmon,

who somehow follow the scent,

transition from salt to fresh,

and swim doggedly upstream;

undeterred

by obstacles and current

and the drag of inertia

and the very human worries

that hold us back.

Like salmon

who give birth, then die,

we too will return

even when little time remains;

completing the circle

of life and death

in the one place called home.

A final wish

even after having lived

most of a lifetime away.

Except for the fear

that things will have changed

and there is no going home again.

Again, just noodling around with something I read. Sometimes, just a passing glance as I skim. In this case, it was a single word: homesick.

I thought about refugees, who continue to long to go back to some god forsaken place, even if their life is at risk. Or immigrants, who never learn the old language, confine themselves to their ethnic community, and keep all the old customs. Or even the 2nd generation offspring, who — out of curiosity, as well as paying honour to their heritage — make a pilgrimage to the ancestral land.

How you never feel quite at home in the different light, and without the familiar turn of seasons. Or, in my case, longing for a decent bagel!