A Short Dictionary of (Potentially) Misunderstood Words – Home.
HOME
It was certainly not a place for her. The only physical location that ever came close to taking on that role was the old mud brick house in Ogbomoso she lived in from age 6 to 12. With head propped against the back of her bed, she would watch the lightening dance through the sky as the storm breathed life into the billowing pale green curtain, tickling her face playfully as it flew back and forth, up and down. Yes, it was home that night. When she went back to visit 5 years later, she found it so uncomfortable to see those dusty window screens, naked and exposed, and she was forced to divert her eyes past them in embarrassment. They had cut down the climbing tree in the front yard.
House was never a home after that.
Home for her was exactly what she wasn’t. Cat’s parents were foreign missionaries with the foreign mission board. The home mission board was a different thing all together and it wasn’t their department. So because she was a foreigner at the onset, the answer to the most common question asked of her was as as obvious as it was impossible for her to give. “Where are you from? Where is home for you?”, they’d implore curiously for an answer. And, yes, there was a moment when ‘home’ was a country. “USA! We’re American!”, she’d reply then. With great excitement she took a year furlough to the home that she’d promised so many that she had. The first day of eighth grade the kids gathered around with great curiosity and pressed, “Where are you from?”
After that, she stopped answering the question.
She learned to think of home in much the same way that others think of a dream job. It became for her a romantic idea, but she believed it to be unattainable. The more romanticized her view of home became over time, the more she searched to fulfill the dream. But because of it’s perceived impossibility, she still met no great disappointment when she discovered the a locale, job or social group were still not the home she was hoping to identify with. Then she began to embrace the freedom that came with her conceptual homelessness and idealized her wanderlust to spite the home she didn’t have.
She wasn’t tied down after that.
Now only occasionally is she distracted from her blissful, weightless wandering by the eerie promise, that “…in the mind of a woman for whom no place is home, the end to all flight is unbearable.”
Now the word ‘home’ makes her uncertain about her future.
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She sat across from her friends and they asked her, “When will you return home?” Her loss for words. Her anxiety. They didn’t understand. There was no way they could.
| Posted in » A Short Dictionary of (Potentially) Misunderstood Words – An Introduction
In the Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera’s characters Franz and Sabina are doomed to failure in their relationship because, while they think they are communicating, the words they use have such different meanings to each of them, that no true understanding takes place. Only compounding confusion and resentment results. Kundera offers “A Short Dictionary of Misunderstood Words” to illuminate for the reader how even the simplest of words can be so heavy laden with memories and associations that their use is continually tailed with deep-set, and often hurtful, misunderstanding.
So in an attempt to dim the offenses I may have committed towards people in my own life through similar misunderstandings, I am going to engage in a short blog series that I will unimaginatively title – “A Short Dictionary of (Potentially) Misunderstood Words”. I am going to mimic Kundera’s style and speak in third person just for kicks, so humor me.
- posts to follow -
2009.
I’m not going to lie when I tell you that 2009 didn’t pan out like I thought it would when we entered into it one year ago today. My hopes and dreams at that time were much much different – I was going to have the best garden in town, my photo business was going to be hugely successful and make far more money than I did in 2008, and I even hoped to marry the wonderful man I loved and dated for 3.5 years. It’s funny to think back on that time, only one year ago. It was set up to be quite a big year. And it was. It was bigger and better than expected – even though not a single one of my expectations were met…
Milestones. In Review.
Well first off there was that whole economy thing that set my photo income numbers off right from the start.
My garden was ok, but things didn’t grow quite as vibrantly as I hoped.
Then I broke up with said ‘man I loved’ and entered into a brief period we will term ‘the dark night of the soul’.
Well that gets us about half way through the year, at which point my life became decidedly more amazing than it has ever been. Seriously. I blossomed out of all that into a wonderful period of change and hope where I was free to rethink what I wanted, what I was doing, and what my dreams for my life are.
So I took a month-long holiday in Spain – where I walked the most grueling and wonderful 630 kilometers through the northern part of Spain. I met the most amazing people and rethought everything. On the plane ride back I noted in my journal, “I have a strong feeling as we land, that I am coming back, only to say goodbye.”
Then I got back, established incredible friendships with friends here, packed out of my apartment at 740 Barnett St., and gave away my garden. Life as a nomad began.
My photo income numbers picked up – and while I didn’t make much more than 2008, I certainly didn’t make less.
I then headed to China for a month to do some photo work. Also, an incredible experience in a country a love deeply with more wonderful people.
I returned from that to close out the rest of the year here in Atlanta with previously mentioned incredible friends and have met even more individuals who I’ve grown to love. There are so many amazing people living in Atlanta and I’m starting to think I’ve been given the opportunity to meet the cream of the crop.
And that brings us to today. December 31st, 2009. My first 25 years of life behind me and an increasingly phenomenal life ahead. Even with the ups and downs, I wouldn’t have done any of it differently if I could.
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So with 2010 right around the corner, this is what I’ve got to look forward to:
I’m saying goodbye to Atlanta, like I thought I would on the return trip from Spain, to move to Prague, Czech Republic. I’m a nomad again and my life is going to continue to blossom as it always does in periods of change. I’m entering into the most promising year of my life yet with the support of all those wonderful friends I have here in Atlanta and all around the world.
So, Happy New Year from me! Here’s to 2010!
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Oh, and my new year’s resolution?
LOVE EVERY MINUTE OF IT.
