Friday, December 29, 2006

Home again

To people like us, 'home' is a nebulous concept. It's never absolute, always relative to where we are and the context of reference. Home can refer to any of :our current abode in the Netherlands, our parents' homes in Penang or Jakarta, our former homes in Waterloo or Cedar Rapids or even our hotel-of-the-moment.

I can only conclude that we lead peripatetic lives... where the simple question 'where do you come from?' can have almost a dozen answers, all of them true, depending on the context of the question. This makes for some confused listeners and may indicate confusion on our part.

But over time, I've learned that though we roll like stones, we have gathered some moss from all our various destinations and all together they make us who we currently are.

As for home, it may be a cliche, but the easiest answer is 'where the heart is'. And sometimes that heart belongs to various places. It doesn't make for easy living.

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