I am sitting at the dining table from my childhood. It is at my sister’s house, which is much bigger than the house we grew up in. It is a dull gray day and I am looking out the window, contemplating the meaning of ‘home’.
It is one month since I officially returned to my hometown. Well not officially because when I crossed the border at midnight I was too exhausted and reluctant to register my car for Ontario plates. Besides, my Cali tags were good until 2013. I have managed to get my health card reinstated so I am a Ontario resident for health care purposes but not parking fines.
I don’t know exactly when Toronto became my hometown because I never thought of it as such growing up. I wasn’t born here and I always wanted to be someplace else. Other branches of the family immigrating from Jamaica opted for England and New York. I pined for New York after every family visit. For pretty much my entire childhood I wanted my home to have a stoop not a driveway.
In my teens I became a Francophile,besotted with all images Parisian. At twenty I was living part-time in Paris. Because I was always subletting, I was always living with and using someone else’s stuff. I loved living in Paris but it was never home, it was an adventure. So was living in NYC when I finally lived there. During my nomad years I probably only used the word home to identify the place where I slept, as in “I’m tired and I’m heading home to bed.” And yet, I was obsessed about claiming my space. I needed to call these temporary rooms my own, a la Virginia Woolf. I asked friends and family to correspond using postcards and I papered the walls with the images. I bought colorful fabrics or blankets to drape over chairs or beds, and candles stamped the space with a signature scent. There was one apartment near Place de la Republique so cluttered that I made my mark by the absence of things. I stashed tchotchkes in cupboards and drawers and under the bed. The living room wall was a pattern of dusty ochre circles waiting for the return of the souvenir plates. It wasn’t home but it was my space.
By the time I got to Los Angeles I had left behind a fully furnished apartment in Toronto. I started from scratch. I scoured thrift stores and flea markets. I scored at the perpetually going-out-of-business Indonesian import stores. I created a space in two weeks, but it took two years to call LA home. It surprised me when it happened. It was a slip of the tongue towards the end of a Christmas visit in TO. I missed my bed and my space and I said “I can’t wait to get home.” Wow, when did that happen?
By the time I bought my house, home was for sharing. My home was a physical space I shared with the people I shared my heart. It was for dinners and brunches, birthdays and holidays. My first big furniture buy was a dining table that could seat twelve. When I packed it all up I wondered where my next home would be. When I sold it all off before the big drive back, I wondered what home would look like now.
I know now that home isn’t defined by the table and chairs and the stuff on the walls. I am lucky to have lived in so many great places, but my home is wherever my heart is happy, safe and secure. My friends and family have been a safe harbor for my heart over the years, and I am blessed with homes all over the world.
On the last leg of my return to Toronto, I met my family at my nephew’s soccer tournament two hours outside the city. I was home the moment I arrived at the soccer pitch – this is where my heart and soul were embraced and held.
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