ON WHAT HOME IS TO ME
The act of remembering my life is like walking down a pothole-ridden path with gnarled roots emerging from the soil—dead and sun-fried grasses lining the trail as I walk in the dead of night.
My footfalls are uneven, expecting the firmness of earth only to plummet into washboards. In the absence of light, I should be wary of traversing this landscape. Yet I continue on, step by step, anticipating the fall and welcoming the finding. It is in falling that one feels the ground with the most impact. So, rather than stand still, I shall take steps to find where I stand now. On this solid mass of writhing ground, there is the firmness and security of knowing—knowing that I stand safely, and knowing that I have one memory I will not lose.
This memory is of my grandparents’ Southdale home. My Afi must be running errands, because it is only my brother, sister, grandma, and me at the kitchen table.
The kitchen is dim—shutters drawn to keep out the summer sun—and there is a breeze coming from the living room behind me, where the patio door must be cracked open. The summer heat has made the room humid—the table and chair are slightly sticky to the touch.
The moment continues without a word spoken—the only noises I hear are my two siblings shuffling around in the pencil-crayon bin: a retired plastic ice cream pail.
I watch my grandmother coloring a page—carefully and quietly, she moves in small, circular strokes. It is a meditation I cannot recreate—a hypnotizing moment that must have lasted only seconds. I know not how old I was during this blip in time, nor do I recall the faces of my family members. It is not their faces I see, but their presence. The house itself is not grand, but it is well-kept and cared for. This is not my earliest memory of life, but it is the first. This embodiment of comfort, of safety, and of mundanity is the first and most formative memory of me—of who I am today.
This is what home means to me.