I Want a Temporary Home Again

You know what I miss? 

I miss train rides. Looking out plane windows and clutching the armrests for a bumpy landing.  I miss walking into a new bedroom. 

A bedroom that will become a home for a while. 

Unzipping my suitcases and digging around for a phone charger and my toothbrush. The essentials after a day worth of traveling. 

As a third culture kid, these temporary homes are home. I’ve never felt so stifled and so trapped in my life. I think everyone feels like that right now. 

This is the longest I’ve stayed in Tennessee since I was 18, and I feel it. 

I want to find a temporary home again. Somewhere the breeze hits as I walk to the bus stop. Somewhere where I’ve never been - I can’t find my way home even if I tried. I want to feel the panic of a 4% phone battery getting off the plane, praying that finding platform B3 is easy to find. 

Its borderline unbearable at moments. 

I don’t know if other TCKs feel like, but I almost can’t breathe if I think about it for too long. That sounds so dramatic… its just like I am being told I can’t go home. My visa is being denied. I can’t go home. 

Like quarantine will never end, and travel will be changing for so long-maybe for good. 

I miss it. 

Laughing with a stranger after watching the wind catch a man across the street hat. 

And becoming friends with the local baker because you come in every morning to write and eat another muffin (save a croissant for later). 

Wake up to a different smell then I’ve never smelled... maybe a tea or eggs cooked with vegetables I don’t know how to pronounce.

Or being wrapped into a traditional dress by girls who were taught by the moms who were taught by their grandmas to lay each piece of fabric just right.

Or feeling in awe that I’m allowed to be present during someone’s family birthday party, or wedding just because I was in town.

I miss listening for any sign of what I’m supposed to do or say when everyone around me is speaking a different language. Or being in a small church or gathering opening one eye in prayer to be sure I didn’t miss the “amen”.

And I know this isn’t necessarily positive, or maybe what we want to talk about because its not exactly encouraging. However, I don’t want to not grieve this. In the past, when things didn’t go the way I wanted and I lost something important I just sort of ignored the pain and reality of it. I just said it was fine and pushed past it. And it turned into the longest journey of grief that had to address the hurt, go back and essentially relive it, thus to grieve it, and move on. 

So here I am, grieving in the now. AS it happens. 

I’ve lost a sense of who I am. As dramatic as it sounds to anyone who lived many years more than me. You probably feel a year is such a small ounce of life in the grand scheme of things. I can’t really deny that either. It is, but it just doesn’t take the sting away in the midst of it. 

I was so ready to move. So excited to leave, and then all of the sudden I’m not. 

There was something I was working so hard towards for over a year, as a finish line. The break from running a business, the break from so much self-discipline, a break from having to handle every issue I’m presented with myself - as the founder, CEO, marketing agent, talent, PR representation, ect of this business. 

Tying loose ends to an era of my life that grew me. The era of falling for Memphis, finding my place in the city, building a community outside of my parents and childhood, and leaps of growth in experience, faith, and emotional resiliency. 

I love Memphis. I read this quote again the other day:

“How lucky I am to having something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” 

- Winnie the Pooh 

A few years ago, Memphis would not have been that hard to say goodbye to. As I’ve reflected and prepared to move, its been so difficult to fathom leaving my people, my favorite corners of cafes, the streets I’ve memorized, the hole-in-the-wall places I am so thrilled to experience, and navigating a city without a map app. 

 In many moments it felt cruel to be here. I felt trapped and stifled. However, as the Lord provided so many aspects of life to be discovered here, in this small city, I’ve recognized it has been essential to be here. 

I know I was supposed to stay in Memphis for a reason.