When Home Becomes

When home becomes a place you visit… what do you call it?

When I left for my freshman year of college, I didn’t think that would be the last time Morton—home—was where I lived. I thought I would be back. Good thing, because if I had known the reality in that move it would have been much more difficult. Of course, I have been back to Morton many times since then, but always for a visit on my way to whatever was next: camp, another year of school, Uganda. I call it home but I am rarely there.

A few weeks ago, I made the decision to visit home sooner than I had originally planned. (For those of you looking forward to a visit, I’m sorry but I have already come and gone. It was a trip with a mission and I did not make it known beforehand because I knew it would be too hard to refuse to see people. When I come back for a longer visit I will see more people and tell you ahead of time.) It was a bit of an awkward situation because while I came “home” to my country and culture, I did not go anywhere I have ever considered home. My two weeks were spent primarily in Chicago, in which I had spent maybe two or three days in my entire life. I am not a city girl. I don’t like concrete and I don’t like shopping. In many ways I felt like more of a tourist there than in Uganda.

When home becomes a place you talk about more than a place you experience… is it still home?

I love telling people stories about Morton. Talking about how my dad used to pick up Annie and me from the bus stop in the tractor so we could ride in the bucket back to the house never gets old. I tell the children about my house in the hills, the trails on which I run that can get even muddier than the ones here, and how everything goes silent with the first snowfall.

I also love telling people in America stories about Uganda. There are things that happen here that do not happen in the States, like when I go for a run at the same time a neighboring school lets out and I end up with ten children I have never met racing me down the red road. Or when I buy a long rope that becomes the best toy in my house and instead of one child playing elastics at a time I can fit a dozen between the verandah and myself. Every day lends itself to love and laughter.

What happens when home becomes a place my friends and family in America have never been?

When you fill out the customs card at the airport, they ask of which country you are a citizen and of which country you are a resident. This was the first time my answers were different. (Although to be honest, I’m still not one hundred percent sure I was supposed to put that I am a Ugandan resident after being here only four months, but no one seemed to notice or mind.) I went through the fast line in customs in Chicago because I was a returning citizen, and I went through the line labeled “Ugandans” in Entebbe because I work here. Now that I think about it, more people welcomed me home when I came back to Noah’s Ark than when I came back to America.

It’s tiresome. There are days when I desperately want to be in both places, and then there are days when I am fed up with both and want to be done going back and forth. There are not days when I want only one. I wish there were. But when home is where the heart is and my heart is in two places then I am always home and I am never home. It’s the “and” that gets hard to handle.

Perhaps this is the most American part of me—I want it all! I want America and Uganda. I want to upgrade to two homes I can have at one time. I want to teach P.7 students at New Horizon during the day and come home and cook supper with Aaron in the evenings. I want to run on dirt roads between sugar cane fields and visit my godchildren once a week. I want to minister to my Ugandan family at Noah’s Ark and be surrounded by my friends and family who have been with me from the beginning. Damn geography.

When home becomes a place where I get the biggest hugs from the shortest arms…

When home becomes a place where my feet turn red by the end of each day (or at the beginning if I haven’t swept in awhile)…

When home becomes a place where the teenagers can fix my electrical problems and the toddlers know the best spot on my shoulder to rest their heads…

Perhaps I will reevaluate this every time I go back and forth between Uganda and America. (You can read a similar post from almost exactly one year ago: The Heartache of Home) Or perhaps over time it will get easier and the world will seem a little smaller and the differences won’t bother me so much. Or perhaps I will grit my teeth every time I make the transition and keep reminding myself that someday—someday—I will get to go home to a place that doesn’t make me grit my teeth and one I will never want to leave. What a welcome home that will be.