Where is Home?

Last March, on a drive back to Vancouver, BC from Everett, Washington we decided to move back "home", back to Montreal. After all it is the city where my wife and I both grew up and it deserved, I thought, to be called home.

Where were you born? Montreal
Where did you grow up? Montreal
Where are you from?

What and where is home exactly? When you have moved do you really have a home? Is home not a place but, rather, a feeling? Is it stability of place? If I had lived in one city my entire life I would have no question where home is - I may not like the place but I would know. The issue is that we have lived in three cities, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. 24 years in Montreal, 2 in Toronto and 15 in Vancouver.

So now we are back in Montreal. It has been seven months back in Montreal, three months in our new house and I wonder when "home" will feel like home.

Where are you from? Vancouver.

That is where home still remains for me. I can still smell the forest in our backyard, feel the sand in my toes at the beach, smell the sweet spring blossoms. I can walk, in my head, along the forest path and appear at 4th and Blanca. I can walk the seawall virtually. And that is only the place. Then there are the people.

Our friends here at "home" have lived lives separate from us for the seventeen years we were away. Sure we still have our memories of good times together as teens and young adults but do we really know each other anymore? No. Those who know me, know my newest quirks, stresses, joys, interests, vacation destinations, dreams...they are all in Vancouver.

It has been harder than I imagined it would be to move "home". It takes work. Physically to get to know the city that has changed and mentally for the motivation to get to know a city that has changed.

I hope that as the months turn into years that "home" will in fact become home again and that when asked "Where are you from?" I will proudly answer "Montreal".

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Comments

Sleepwalker said…
It is indeed a lingering and worthwhile question. Like it or not, "home" may well be Vancouver. This is where you have lived your adult life and made your adult choices. You were married there, you worked successfully there and you raised your family there. There is no harm in feeling at home where those momentous events took place. It just shows how well you adjusted to Vancouver.
Just accept what is... (from a Montreal ex-pat)...
January 17, 2010
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