I had a strange realization last night. In a couple days I fly out to spend Christmas with my family, but I'm really not “Going home for the holidays.”
After I moved out on my own, my parents moved a couple times themselves but those other houses still felt like home to me, even though I never actually lived in either of them myself. But it's different now after this third move, to Saskatoon.
Other than the rare times with snow on the highways or some other road obstruction, I've never had to travel for longer than 40 minutes to spend time with my family. With their other houses I always felt at home there, as I was able to visit frequently and spent a lot of time there so I was strongly accustomed to them. In fact, while I lived in this apartment, to me home was my parents' house.
This Christmas I'm going to a house I've never even visited before. I know, technically I have been there back in September when I helped them move. But really, the extent of my time in their new home was just spending a day unloading a truck into the empty house and eating a quick-and-easy KFC take-out dinner. I spent that night back at my brother and sister-in-law's place and flew back to Abbotsford the following morning. I have a mental image of what their unpacked-and-set-up home might look like but that's it.
And now, with the extra physical distance between us, it takes much more time and expense to visit. I probably won't get out there more than a couple times a year, so by the time their house might start feeling like home, they'll be moving again and it'll start all over. Although I will certainly look forward to all my visits to see my family (although that may change after experiencing a Saskatoon winter...), I'm not sure that I'll be able to view my parents' house as home ever again.
And thus begins the process of redefining what home means to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment