We did it! We successfully managed our 24-hour voyage with a baby, a dog, and about a month’s worth of luggage for our temporary home base back in the US of A. Somewhere in that process, we repatriated ourselves. We don’t live in the Southern Hemisphere anymore.
As such, you lovely friends and family are welcoming us “home.” But are we? We have good friends here who (bless them) brought over lasagna, perhaps the most “home” of all foods, our first night here. We have extended family not too far away. We aren’t necessarily starting over in those ways. But neither Ryan nor I have lived in the mid-Atlantic region before. Just as much feels new as it does familiar. For example, we went to Safeway and, overwhelmed by the options for everything from sausage to salad dressing, I found myself gravitating safely toward the same things I bought in Santiago. We can still be creatures of comfort on these surreal adventures. (That is until I found the pita chips.) Food, it seems, is the first thing that tells you you’re home, or that you’re far from it.
I used to write about what I missed about home. Now, and for a little while I imagine, I’ll think about what I miss about Chile… neighborhood streets learned so well walking Ruby, friends from all over the world, passing by the hospital where my daughter was born. Recently, back in Chile, I met with my writing group, which is high on the list of what I miss. We are a diverse group, hailing from Argentina, Denmark, Colombia, Australia, and the U.S. Eileen, one of the Americans, recently visited the U.S., but the opposite coast than where she is from. Mary, the Aussie in our group, said how nice it was that she was going home, but Eileen didn’t consider it the case since it felt like such a different part of the country. Sure, the conveniences of language and custom may prevail, but is it really “home”? For Mary, Australia—any region of it—is “home” and elicits all the comfort encased in the word. I think I see it both ways now that my feet are once again on U.S soil.
Surprisingly, a South America connection has been a reassuring thread during our first week here (and not just because I keep saying “Buenos días” and “Gracias.”) When we got new cell phones, our customer service rep was from Perú. When we looked at a house to rent, it turned out the owner’s family was originally from Argentina. In line at Hertz, when a sharply dressed woman saw H. and said, “Que linda,” I asked where she was from as certainly she, too, was from somewhere else. If you can believe it, that somewhere else was Santiago. She went to the school that is around the corner from what is now our old apartment. And even though she’s raised three children far from home, she still misses the empanadas. One day gone, and I was so eager to talk about “home” as in Chile, to compare what we each knew about the same faraway place. While it was truly her homeland and not mine, it is H.’s, it is Ruby’s. It was our first home as a family. And when I found a dog park down the street, I felt a certain pride in telling the other owners that our dog had come all the way from Chile.
So have we.
