Home after 1.5 Years

Last year around Christmastime, I got very homesick, but I couldn't buy a ticket with such little advanced planning. So I stayed in Spain. This year, thanks to a generous gift from my parents, I flew back to Canada to enjoy snow, multiculturalism, central heating, and food from every place in the world you can think of. Also terrible fashion sense, extremely cold nights, wayyy too early dinners, and high taxes.

During a hike in the snow.

Yeah, we ate it ALL.

Indian food. Oh how I love thee.

I couldn't have been happier to be home. How contrary to when it was time to leave Canada, when I was nervous yet determined to discover a new way of life. Sometimes we find out what we truly love when we leave it. How lucky I am to be able to realize that, simply by buying a return airline ticket. In 2013, I honestly believed the move to Europe would be extremely long-term, perhaps even permanent. I'm not so sure now, after spending time back in my hometown.

Reunion

So what is home to me? Home is feeling overjoyed to see the mountains, the layout of the city as your plane lands, to instantly recognize the scent of the streets as you walk out the front door. It's being able to flirt with someone cute, in those subtle ways that come with communicating with words, gestures, and timing. Home is marvelling at what has changed, and even more so at what has stayed the same. You see the same person, and although their paunch is a little bigger and more grey covers their head, they speak and it's like listening to an old recording.

Home is what you think of when you wake up in the middle of your flight home, and realize what you're leaving behind. And it hurts. So you comfort yourself by thinking about your return one day. You may not know when exactly that will be, but you know home will be there when you come back.