How To Belong
Finding Our Place In The World
What is home to you? Home is where the heart is. Then who has your heart? Who has mine? My pets? Probably. Home is not a place, it is a feeling. If that is true, then why don’t I feel at home anywhere anymore? I drove back early Friday morning from Targu Secuiesc after bringing Bence to the Elipet pick up place to travel to Holland. I kept saying on the way back, I just want to home. I felt tired and sad and needed to rest, snuggle up. Feel the comfort of home. Parking the car in front of my house, I heard myself mumble I want to go home but I don’t know where that is.
I left home at eighteen and moved to London. The first time I visited my mother, it must have been Christmas, I went back to London after two weeks and was miserably homesick. I had moved into a shared house in Hendon. I felt so lost. I wanted to come home. My mother said “Don’t. This is what you have dreamt of. Give it a chance.” My mum was right. I stuck it out and bit by bit London became my home. I had favourite places, met new people and loved exploring the vast city. I used to hide in Westminster Abbey to read. I loved eating in the East End. Indian at New Tayab’s, cheesecake and bagels from the bakery on Brick Lane, breakfast at Pellici’s. I will never forget when I was in Holland for Easter, and on the eve of flying back to London finally I said, I can’t wait to get back home. London had become my home.
What is the difference between feeling at home or being at home somewhere?
After finishing college, I moved back to Holland. I lived in Amsterdam for ten years. Even though this is where my family is from for a few generations, it never felt home to me. I had cool jobs, wonderful friends, and yet I felt like a fish out of water. I didn’t have any favourite places. I still feel awkard when international friends ask me for tips where to go when they visit Amsterdam. I have no idea. I can point out where you can get good cake, like apple pie (Winkel), but that is about it. Whevener I go back I can stay a maximum three or four days, and that is completely devoted to people I love. I don’t care where we go, or what we do (as long as it involves at least one box full of Waldo’s cakes), as long as we are together.
What is the difference between feeling at home or being at home somewhere? Tuesday, I attended the Trianon commemoration here in the village of Zalanpatak. On our way to the small church with my neighbours, all dressed to the nines, I joked: You are the ladies. I am the tourist. My friend Raluca and I are the only “outsiders” here. The rest of our 59 inhabitants were born and raised here and brought their spouses here. If you are, like me, only vaguely familiar with the history of Transylvania, it is an experience to live here. Let’s just say that since the signing of the treaty in 1920 things have not settled. My favourite shopkeeper joked afterwards that I was now a member of the Hungarian people’s party. In a way for the Hungarians here, they lost their home without leaving it or it physically disappearing. It suddenly belonged to another nation.
Most of the people here are kind. I am lucky having Eva and her family next to me, Margit across the road. On of my neighbour’s distant cousins, who was born and raised here but now lives in London contacted me after seeing on Facebook that I had (briefly) put my house up for sale. She said, I hope you decide to stay. I eventually want to come back, and I really like the idea of you and Raluca being there.
Homes change after we leave them. My parents have moved three times I think after I left home. Every time they move, and I come stay I get annoyed, opening kitchen cabinets ad random, having to ask for a towel. Not knowing where things are irks me. I never go back to places where I once lived. Nostalgia is not an emotion I handle well. Seeing other people living in what was my home feels weird. I don’t want to see what they have changed. The paint, the wallpaper, the garden. I want to leave my home intact, the way it was, in my memories.
Oh that is our favourite house in the village! That looks like the perfect home.
What makes home a home? My things are just my things. I use them to build a nest with. I surround myself with objects that are practical, pretty, comforting. But take them, and I will find other things. In that sense I am not attached to the material things that help build a home. Most of my stuff has been in storage for seven years now, and I can’t say I missed any of it. The vast majority of it is now being taken to the local charity shop every Wednesday.
If I were to renovate this place, then I know that putting my hands on everything, by sanding and painting wood, slapping hemp plaster on the walls, building furniture, bit by bit I will appropriate this place. The touch, the love, the time and the effort would in a way be about bonding, between me and this quirky little building. Walking around I see all the potential. The wood beams I bought for the renovation, the huge barn, rocks everywhere. The stream. My hands are itching to create. To make this place as pretty as I know it can be. But I am scared to. What if I give it my all again, and I still will want to leave. What if I never will feel like I belong here? Living in Transylvania is all I dreamt of when I was sick. Now, after seven years here, it is still not my home.
Eva had a few guests from the King’s House visiting her the other day. She called me. Leeleeko, can you come please to help with translation? I ran over as quick as. When the guests discovered where I live, in the blue house, they all yelled: Oh that is our favourite house in the village! That looks like the perfect home.
At least through a stranger’s eyes…