Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Home hemma chez moi...

So I am here at my parent's home in Coppell, Texas, a balmy humid day when they are announcing storms on the way...I am several layers removed from "home", wherever that may be...New home in Stockholm since 2004, with friends I am not able to have fika with (until June 13!)...Hemma...Ten months in California: our home, that is Beth's and mine from 1980 onward, yet not onward...How I have loved being back in beautiful northern California, around the Bay, the City on Seven Hills with the Golden Gate, in Santa Cruz, in the great Central Valley, with old friends, and sounds from America, India, Africa, China, Mexico, Iraq, Portugal and yes, Sweden...Yet not completely home in the sense of staying, of never leaving, I will say "Adios" to more than one brand new friend made...I fly here to Dallas, my sister and brother-in-law, my parents are here in the place where I grew up...family home...

I find myself in a Chili's restaurant with 45 French people from Lyon, I am meeting our long-time friend Brigitte, with her line-dancing club on a 10-day trip to Texas...France and Sweden meet in Texas...Because we had/have another "home", a "chez nous", another adopted land in the series, whose language we still speak, the accent colours my Swedish today...I had forgotten how much I missed this, 45 people at a dinner table all speaking French at the same time, so wild compared to our quieter meals in Stockholm (man it's really loud in here!)...I am spending an entire evening in French,, like the old days, in that other home...As I drive back to Coppell, back "home" (?), here in a place I have only come back to visit for 5 days, French in my head, my family in Lyon and California, with Norwegian Sondre Lerche on the rental car CD, I suddenly have no idea where home is supposed to be, and for some reason, I smile, there at the wheel of my Yaris-capsule on the night expressway...Home is no particular place, yet at the same time, it is everywhere I may be, it can be anywhere, if I let go of my particular notions of what it should be...Hemma, chez moi, home, is wherever I happen to be because I am with Him, He is here, and I am part of something bigger, part of you over there or back yonder or here with me now: it is strangely liberating, freeing, frighteningly open and undefined and abstract, but that's all right...

So I will see you, whoever you are, wherever you are, when I get home...