How does one define it? That familiar strange sensation of old and comfortable things accompanied by a vague but definite sense of being out of touch. At home and not at home. Homecomings are complicated. Emotions and expectations are disproportionately high. My closest and most meaningful reasons for being alive are arrayed before me with eager smiles and outstretched arms. I hold and hug and kiss and I cannot get enough of their smell. Funny how homecoming is so sensory.
Home! A month is a long time to be away.
Arrivals. The joy of my arms wrapped around my horse's chunky neck and the muddy sweet feel of him - he slightly aloof because of my long absence and my over enthusiastic emotion; the wriggling, licking, leaping joy of our dogs - who have no problem whatsoever with over enthusiastic emotional displays. The dogs! In my absence Angus has left puppyhood behind and two dogs gleefully let me know that it is good that I am home.
In the shadows, their presence very much felt but for now, studiously ignored, are my responsibilities. They wait patiently but confidently. My soul sneaks a glance and shrinks back. There are so many. They don't mind waiting. Like many coloured layers of thread they know that they belong in my hands and that I will pick them up in a while. But not now. Now it the time of transition. Of re-entry... And I have time. My husband has arranged to take Kate to College for the next two days so that I can have some time at home. Home alone. Home. My soul needs this. It needs the time to process, to gather the pieces together. It has been such a good trip. But literally half a world away; I have been in another world. The concept of parallel universes is tangible, experiential. Far away, people of other languages, life experiences, cultures and nations are going about their living, and for a while we have shared that living. They welcomed me and drew me in. I have been there. I am there. But I am also here.
Yesterday morning it is such a relief to go inside the cool quiet of my air-conditioned bedroom. The sun outside is impossibly hot, even at 7 in the morning. Later, at the airport in Bangkok I position my over-hot body right in front of the air conditioner and I am reluctant to move, even when it is my turn at the Passport Control counter. Many hours later I come off the airplane into another airport. It is winter in Europe and I am bracing myself for the cold. But I am securely enclosed in a centrally heated building. It feels weird. My body is already disorientated about the mystery of having travelled 12 hours but it only being 6 hours later. And by the fact that far away in Cambodia it is the middle of the night, when I should be sleeping, not the cusp edge between late afternoon and early evening. There are things the mind knows that the body cannot understand. But now it must also deal with heating where there was cooling. And I need to wait for 2 hours in this place. I wander past coffee shops cheery with Christmas advertising and colour, and where the drinks on display are warming drinks - mulled wine and hot chocolate and coffees with cream. My body is sadly yearning for ice. Iced coffee, iced tea, iced anything. Finally, at Starbucks, I find what is advertised as a ''Lime Cooler' and I order one with extra ice. It is delicious and refreshing. I down it in 10 minutes and go back and order another one, to the obvious but kindly amusement of the barrista behind the counter.
Home! But home feels strange because there is another place - places - my heart calls home too. There are people who have bound me to themselves with cords of love, and I to them. In the midst of my happiness at being home is an overwhelming longing. This is the tension I now embrace, the tension that is the gift of travel.
In the midst of the UK night I awaken. Of course! It is morning in Cambodia. And I am far too hot. I get up and switch off the central heating. My poor family also has to deal with my disorientation. Then I drink some water - filling my glass from the tap. This too feels strange. I have spent a whole month reminding myself NEVER to drink water from a tap. It feels like a forbidden activity, and I have to reassure myself that it is safe to do so. I go back to bed and fall asleep again to the sound of my husband's quiet breathing. It is going to be ok. It is ok. I am home.
Homecomings are everywhere. They are often in unexpected places too. They are the stitches of the threads that hold the pieces of my soul, my very heart, secure, each in its place. It is because of these homecomings that I am able to knead and integrate these diverse experiences on opposite ends of the earth into the one composite whole that is me and the way I experience my living. I am. I am England and South Africa and Brazil and Thailand and Myanmar and Cambodia.
Mary Oliver asks: ''What is it that you intend to do with your one wild and precious life?'' Here is my answer. In the peace of the shell that is my home I reflect that this is it. Whole. I know. I am at home in this world, in this beautiful, heartbreaking, overwhelming, impossible place. I live. And I love.
This is mine. This is me. This is homecoming.
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