Dorothy clicked her heels together and repeated, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s…”
Clickety-clack. She was back, smack down in the middle of Kansas, the place there was no place like. Fascinating! Not that the clicking of heels magically transported her home, or her journey through whimsical Oz, or her Get-Along Gang of eccentric buddies. Nope. What I find fascinating is that there was no mix up of where clicking her ruby reds would take her; it was one place. It was Kansas. She had been around the world and ay,ay,ay – Kansas was home.
As an expat, it’s fascinating because, well, it makes me wonder, do expats have a Kansas; that one place they get the warm and fuzzies about? One place they’d click their heels to be? Besides for a few expats I know, who have been on the proverbial “road” since they were kids, most other expats have a place of origin, a place they were anchored to before living abroad. But whether you’ve moved your whole life or started down this path later on, does your idea of home change once you move abroad? If expats clicked their heels together and wished for home, where would they end up?
When I’m in New Jersey and friends ask about my departure back to the Dominican Republic, I say, “I fly home in a week.” At that moment, Santo Domingo – my 3rd floor apartment, my noisy neighborhood, my trusted colmado where I buy cold beer from, my life in the Dominican Republic – is Kansas. When I’m in DR and friends ask where I’m traveling to, I respond, “Home. New Jersey.” My loud, Cuban family, my small block in quiet suburbia, my old stomping grounds, my gas stations where I don’t have to pump my own gas, my local CVS, my life in New Jersey – that’s now home. But how is it possible that home could be both places, two places that are so conflictingly different?
One is a home of past, the other a home of present. One is a home of stability, the other a home of adventure. One, a home of rules and organization, the other a lawless, free-for-all. I love both homes… and, sometimes, I hate both homes.
There is a beauty that comes with the safety of Kansas – or for me, New Jersey – the mindless, worry-free wandering, the routine, the familiar face of Auntie Em. There is comfort in living life in a smaller, cozier bubble where everything is written in stone, nothing is strange and there are certainly no flying monkeys. Yet there’s also a beauty in the opening and molding and inevitable changing of your mind that comes with following a different road, where safety is traded in for adventure. Repetition for surprise. Kansas for Oz, where the excitement of knowing that you never know where the yellow brick road will lead is thrilling. Life abroad takes anything and everything you ever thought was written in stone and erases it like it never existed and flying monkeys are just the beginning.
Unlike Dorothy, maybe expats don’t have a clear-cut home, maybe home becomes where you aren’t, that other place you wish you could click your slippers to be. Maybe the twister excitement of overseas that spins you dizzy and dazzled at the same time, is a blessing and a curse, leaving you missing the comforts of Kansas yet yearning for adventure down some unknown yellow road… with your little dog too.