All the Ways Home

I have always loved Thanksgiving. When I was a kid living in Mexico, I'd write a Thanksgiving day play to be performed in front of the short term mission group that would come to our home for the holiday. I always put a great deal of thought and effort into my original script, hoping to capture some feeling of gratitude for the gifts I'd been given, and using all of my seven-to-ten-year-old talent to convey that feeling to my captive audience (it was my house, attendance was not optional).

While my theatrical performances were not always real-to-life (a fan favorite was my Thanksgiving adaptation of Goldilocks), I think that my past week has been full of play-worthy moments. I'll set the scene.

(Jardin de Niños in rural Mexico. Tuesday afternoon, lunchtime. It is a bright, beautiful autumn day. Mountains and simple houses form the backdrop. One hundred kindergarten-aged children are preparing to picnic with their American English teacher, ALYSE. She is not very hungry.)

On this Tuesday, we had taught the kiddos about Thanksgiving, and decided to share a meal together in honor of the occasion. After Laura (the teacher I assist) and I gave thanks, she encouraged the kids to share some of their food with each other and with their teachers. All of the kids chipped in, and most of the teachers ended up with three or four taquitos. Once the kids saw that their teacher had enough food as can be reasonably expected to fill a person, they'd stop offering food to her. Unless that teacher was me.

I tried to calculate the exact number of taquitos I was given, and failed. I think, though, that it was at least thirty. I also received an apple, a pear, and a cup of jello (the wildly popular snack of choice of Mexico State residents). The kids got a kick out of seeing me try to hold all of my taquitos, and laughed even harder when I began to eat them.

Dozens of Kindergarteners

Teacher Ahleez is going to get fat!!!

(Peals of laughter)

One Kindergartener

She ate a taquito! Quick, give her another one!

I just about died of happiness surrounded by so many five year olds who were sharing their meals so joyfully. I did have to cut off the gift-giving of taquitos eventually. But even though I had more taquitos than I could reasonably eat in a week, the kids were sad I stopped accepting more.

I tried to give away as many as I could to other teachers, but I still left the school with sixteen taquitos wrapped in plastic. On my taxi ride back, I discretely placed them in my bag so that they wouldn't get in the way of my fellow passengers.

That is when I realized, home is where I end up after a long day's work with a purse full of taquitos.

Only two days later, I was aboard a night bus (that played Mulan at volume level blaring until 1:30 AM). I was on my way to spend Thanksgiving day in the house I grew up in in Mexico with a packed bag at my feet. Although I had prepared for the trip, I didn't pack any shampoo or conditioner. I never do when I'm headed home.

I spent the long weekend enjoying the arid climate, waking up to the smell of woven blankets and dusty tile, and walking through the archways that were once the stages to my Thanksgiving day plays. Even though I haven't lived in that house for eight years, I still feel like it is mine in some way. That house is more my home than any other house has been.

I made my way back to my Atlacomulco home feeling sad to leave. But I was excited when I realized that it is less than a month until I'm at home in Louisiana for Christmas.

To add to it all, it is less than a year before I can visit my college home in rural Maryland.

Having moved as much as I have, I don't think of every city I've lived in as home, much less every house. Even the places that do feel like home feel that way for different reasons. There's nothing like being with my family. There's nothing like being in the patio where I spent my childhood. There's nothing like being in the first city that I lived in on my own.

I don't quite know what makes a house a home, despite having read the many framed clichès that hang from people's kitchen walls. I do know that because I have many homes, there's always a tiny bit of homesickness wherever I am; there's a deep sense of love for a place that I miss by not being in it, and that can't be perfectly fulfilled unless I learn to quadrilocate (or something like that).

I also know, though, that I can take a taxi in central Mexico, a twelve passenger on desert offroads, my family's minivan through woods in Louisiana, or a car over hills in Maryland to make it back home. And I am finding that having that many roads home, that having many ways to end up in a place that fills your heart, is a thing to be very thankful for.