Homeward Bound
As an expat, Christmas is the blessed time of the year when you go HOME, i remember vividly when living in China the anticipation building up as we were getting closer to the departure date every year. The need for cheese, ocean and fresh air and the excitement to soon be able to hug my friends and family were becoming unbearable.
And then at the end of the holiday, in the aftermath of new-years celebrations, the feelings of sadness at the prospect of not seeing them again for another year slowly replaced by the underlying consolation that we’d soon be back to…to our Julu Lu Home, our flat overlooking the plane trees of the former french concession, in Shanghai, 9655 km away from here, always exotic, always familiar.
We moved to Berlin a year ago. I’m grateful we were able to make this move and get closer to ours, but something happened on the way back. I left a part of me somewhere in the clouds. How to call it, “Heimat”? “Maison”? After living abroad for more than 8 years now, and having changed country 4 times, the concept of “a Home” as a geographical place, where i would feel a strong sense of belonging seems to have faded away.
Of course, France is my home-country and leaving it has made me love it more than ever, but when i go visit my parents in my hometown, i do feel like a tourist.
Shanghai is the city where i spent the longest time, built a life with my husband, gave birth to my daughter, so many major life events are connected to China. But there is no place for us anymore in Shanghai, a lot of our friends have left or will be leaving soon, the Julu Lu place has been rented to another ‘Laowai’ (= slang word for ‘foreigner’ in Chinese) my temporary residency permit has expired and I’m now back to being a plain Alien (=official word for foreigner in China).
Paris? A thought occurred to me when spending a few weeks in Paris last year. “…In Paris, you cannot lie”, why did i think that…who knows…maybe living abroad, speaking other languages makes it easier to be another version of yourself — not a completely different person — just a V1.1.2 type of version — to “say things” just to hear the sound of it getting out of your mouth, without necessarily meaning it. But you can’t fool around with Haussmannian facades, they know the real YOU..
And then parenthood happened — a all other topic — that i know is definitely playing a role in my homelessness. When i became a mum, the baton was passed to me, i was forced to suddenly quit my role as the eternal teenager to play the adult part, as all the cards got redistributed, parents becoming grand-parents and a completely new dynamic settling in.
This is scary as hell, but also feels liberating in a way, as it means that i now have the chance to create a new home for myself and my family. A place where i get to be the full version of me, that lets me get away with my anglicisms, pardons my french, understands why i need to remove my shoes before entering the flat. A new space with our own rules, our rituals, our own legends, made of bits and pieces we will continue to collect on our journey.
Where is this place? In my mind? In my dreams? Could it be this blog? I don’t know, but it has become my goal to find this special somewhere and make it nice and cosy.
What i’m also interested about is to see how it will be for my daughter. Will she also be homeless? Will she feel German? French ? Chinese? Nigerian? All together? None of the above? The good thing is she will not be alone in the caravanserai as a new generation of nomads, migrants, refugees, third culture babies will come together and shape a new world, that i can’t wait to see.
