Home
is the
place where you happen to
live.
That
was always the case for Christina. Wherever she lived, and living was
being alone. It was, for lack of a better word, practical. Home was
clean, because home never stayed the same for very long. For as long
as she could remember she had been on the move. First with her
parents moving from job to job like a grazing herd, and then she on
her own.
From
seventeen to fifty. Three years behind the same door was the longest
she could recall being in one place. This small room, in a different
world, was maybe less grand than most of the places she had called
home, but it was really no better, or worse, than most of them.
***
Home
is where you grow up.
She
was born here. Literally. In the bathroom. Kyoko hadn't know any
other place than this one. Within walking distance from both school
and cram school. Within walking distance from her old middle school,
grade school and elementary school. Within walking distance from her
entire life.
Home
is
where you learn to behave as is
proper. Where your parents live proper lives. Home is furnished
according to your family's status, is of the proper size for a public
servant family and is situated where other families of equal status
are likely to be found. Home is – proper.
***
Home
is family.
It
doesn't really matter where you live as long as your family is there.
Maybe they had moved a couple of times, but the Wakayamas had always
stayed together. And they always stood together. Four of them, like
the four walls
of what others called home.
The
latest building that others named their home had seen them playing
out their merry antics the last five years. It was, Ryu gloated and
Noriko admitted, large. Abundantly so. Both their parents worked, and
they
were,
mildly put, well off.
But
this house, or their previous, small one, was equally home. Home only
when there was family there, because an empty house is a dead thing
and not a home.
***
Home
is a tennis court, with a net in the middle.
That
net had separated Yukio's life into two halves for the better part of
ten years. Like the ball he was bounced between his parents. One
lived close to school, and lately he spent most of his sleeping hours
there, but his father lived less than half an hour away with train.
Occasionally during school days, and usually during school breaks he
lived there.
But
never on Fridays. Not for half a year. In a sense that café had
become his third home. A neutral zone, like where the umpire sat.
***
Home
is sharing and safety.
Home
is where those you love stay near you. Home is never loss. Home isn't
a place you need to leave behind because you can't stand it any
longer.
Home
is always
in the now. Before that
time he had known
that home had also been a place he could remember from earlier. But
after that time home
was always a place that belonged to the here and now.
Home
is shared with Amaya. Home is two bedrooms and a living room. Home is
where he can make her safe. Home is safety, the safety he can buy,
the reason he works and the place where, every day, the same two
faces will show up before sleep.
Home
will one day become where he can see a future. Not today, not
tomorrow, but one day.
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