Homeward Bound

We are heading home to Key West in less than 48 hours, and I’m beginning to feel giddy.

When I lived in New York, and I came back to Tennessee for the holidays, it always bothered my mother when I referenced returning to the city as “going home.” My defense was that I said this in both directions: leaving New York for Tennessee was “going home,” and going back to New York was also “going home.” It was a matter of easy semantics, rather than the heart. Andrew hasn’t expressed those feelings when I term our return to Key West “going home,” but I wince a bit when I say it anyway: Switzerland is my new home, and I gradually claim it as well.

Besides, home is quite a fluid thing, isn’t it? We like to say home is “where the heart is,” and a big chunk of my heart is invested in a 6’6’ Scot that lives in Switzerland. For me, it’s always been about the people, and also, the ineffable energy of a place: the way I breathe a sigh of relief when I get off a plane in Key West, the way I smell the salt of the ocean, the way I feel the breeze in my hair as I ride my bicycle. Home has never been terribly concrete for me. While this is my first time living in another country, I’ve moved around a good bit: East Tennessee to Washington to New Orleans to New York to Key West, and I’ve often moved apartments within those places. I don’t have a lot of belongings, and I’m not terribly precious about the things that come and go with moves (or even are blown away in the occasional hurricane).

Though I’m not sentimental about the things of a home, I am sentimental about longing for the feeling of home. When I lived in New York, I found that listening to “lonely in the big city” songs made me feel closer to my birthplace in Tennessee, made me feel heard and understood as an outsider, “lonesome, and longing to see them hills where I come from,” in the words of Doc Watson. Watson’s “Southbound” wasn’t the only tune that gave my longing a shape; it was accompanied by Elton John’s “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters,” Simon and Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound” and “The Only Living Boy in New York,” and perhaps most appropriately, Jim Croce’s “New York’s Not My Home.”

I haven’t quite found a soundtrack that takes me back to America in Switzerland. It felt strange and incongruous to play Jimmy Buffett while I was jogging along Lake Geneva. Andrew sometimes catches me listening to the gangster rap of my youth while in the shower, which is more about a momentary rebellion from domesticity and a trip back to my wilder, younger days (last year) than nostalgia. I was touched when, at an “American Thanksgiving” dinner party thrown by some kind Swiss friends, Andrew put on Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.”

Strolling along the Grand Rue or taking the train to nearby Nyon or Lausanne, I certainly still feel more like a tourist than a resident. Sure, some of that is because I still have to ask directions in my semi-indecipherable French, carefully check the denominations on my coins, and pore over Google Maps as I set out for a new destination. But some of it is simply the foreign feeling of the place, even if it is, admittedly, in some ways better. The Alps are more majestic than the familiar Smoky Mountains, whose highest peak, Clingman’s Dome is 2,205 meters vs. the Alps’ Mont Blanc at 4,810 meters. The streets are cleaner, the houses newly painted, the residents better-heeled than the streets of Key West; they wear cycling gear rather than flip flops on their bikes. The Swiss don’t honk their horns like New York drivers; nor do they swill beer in the street like New Orleanians; they don’t shout across the road or eat a messy slice of cheese pizza on the corner (roasted chestnuts on the other hand…).

The funny thing is: I imagine growing to love these characteristics over time. Who doesn’t appreciate considerate drivers, clean streets, striking snow-capped mountains? I do feel that inward sigh of relief when I get off the train, walk the hill, see our grey iron gate, and am illuminated by the lights of our garden. I have a similar feeling as I sit down on the chair outside that’s begun to feel familiar to my body, ease off my boots, and think about what we’ll make for dinner.

In this way, as much as I look forward to going home to Key West, I also look forward to “going home” when I head back to Switzerland.