Out of Great Joy

It’s a running joke in our family that my sisters love to ask my mom who is her favorite daughter (or, they skip asking Mom and outright declare to the family that “I’m Mom’s favorite”). My mom’s answers to the question "I'm your favorite, right?" are always wonderfully playful like, “You’re my favorite (and also only) 18-year-old daughter” or “You’re my favorite (and also only) daughter currently living in Wisconsin” or “You’re my favorite (and also only) left-handed daughter.” The joke is fun because we know that, of course, we’re all her favorites.

Somehow - although they don't know that it's a running joke in my family too - it has also turned into a running joke with my students, especially my middle school and high school students, who are always saying, “But we’re your favorite class, right? You love us the most, right?” to which I always reply with a twinkle in my eye, “But of course!” I was truly touched when a grandmother of one of my students said her grandson told her that, “We love Sarah and we know she loves each one of us.”

My wonderful students, you are all my favorites and I love you all. Thanks for two amazing years.

In this post, I’d like to return to a topic I’ve discussed here before – the definition of “home.”

How would you define the word “home?” Type “quotations about home” into an Internet search engine and you’ll get lists and lists of quotations from philosophers and poets and actors and politicians, all trying to define their unique concept of “home.”

Perhaps it’s easiest to start with what I think “home” isn’t (or isn’t always). “Home” is not always synonymous with “where you currently live.” Although I lived and worked in Pittsburgh for 2 months and loved the city and met great people, I never called it “home.” “Home” is not always synonymous with “birthplace.” If you were born in Indiana but your family moved to Kentucky when you were 6 months old, you probably wouldn’t call Indiana your “home.” What's interesting about the concept of "home" is that we're not only talking about a physical location - like the city where we currently live - but also an emotional state (feeling "at home"). There's great truth to the saying that home is people you love and who love you.

When I reflect back on my arrival in Cieszyn two years ago, I realize now that I felt so overwhelmed and stressed and lonely at the beginning because I felt utterly homeless. I'd just left two wonderful American homes: my Chicago home and, as a recent college graduate, my university home. And a new town doesn't automatically become your "home" just because it's your current physical location. On Facebook you can change the "current city" listed on your profile in 3 seconds, but you can't change where you feel at home so easily.

I think we spend our entire lives searching for homes. We enter new jobs, new schools, move to new cities, meet new people, and in the process we find homes, lose homes, search for new homes. I think that we have an innate need to find "homes" wherever we are, that we can't help but desire that sense of belonging, safety, security, and familiarity we get from having somewhere to call "home." My first semester here I had to work very hard to discover a home in Cieszyn - and it definitely didn't happen automatically or overnight. But I had an innate need to discover my purpose, find my place, connect with people I could feel "at home" with. And then one night I went to bed in Cieszyn and woke up at home. And I know for sure that I couldn't have stayed in Cieszyn for a second year if it hadn't become a true home during my first year.

For example, on a morning stroll this summer in Chicago, my sister said hello to someone we walked by, and I didn’t know if she said hello because she knew the person or because it’s culturally polite to greet anyone you happen to meet on the street, stranger or friend. And it shocked me that I didn’t know how to interpret her “hello.” I’d lived here for 23 years! What had happened?

What had happened was that in August 2009 I kind of stopped “acting American” about the people I greeted and didn’t greet on the streets because instead I had adopted “Polish greeting culture.” I also learned the "proper Polish way" to greet people. I learned pretty quickly that only crazy American teachers wave at their Polish students from across the street. A tiny restrained smile (it's important that it's tiny - gigantic smiles scream SHE'S AMERICAN or at least NOT FROM POLAND) and subtle head nod is a more appropriate – and less embarrassing – sign of recognition and acknowledgement. So when I returned to Chicago last summer, I’d spent the past 11 months living and breathing on Polish streets and interacting the “Polish way.” I hadn’t had any opportunity to practice how we interact on American streets. And I had to re-learn what I’d known for 23 years but had forgotten in only 11 brief but yet profound months away from the States.

It’s not that the two systems of greeting – the “Polish way” and the “American way” – are necessarily mutually exclusive. Except the truth is that waving isn’t popular in Poland and that greeting with three pecks on the cheek isn’t popular in Chicago. Perhaps this example of “culturally specific greeting patterns” sounds silly or insignificant, but it truly threw me for a loop last summer because I didn’t intuitively know how to act or how to respond "like an American" and that surprised and sometimes bothered me. It wasn’t like I had experienced a different culture and now felt that I had choices – like there were two switches and I could choose to turn on either the “act American” switch or the “act Polish/European” switch. Sometimes I couldn’t find the “act American” switch at all.

Okay, back to the concept of “home.” (And, yes, that was a terrible “cop-out” transition sentence.) In his book about the re-entry process called The Art of Coming Home, Craig Storti provides a great definition of “home” that talks about how it’s the little, everyday interactions, sights, sounds, and experiences that create a feeling of “home.” He also says that it’s the sudden absence of these “home markers” when we return from living abroad that results in re-entry culture shock. We expect our “home country” to feel like “home” but we miss the little markers and experiences that made our “foreign home” feel like home. The reality is that because we’ve spent a significant amount of time away from our “home country,” in many ways it doesn’t quite feel like “home” when we first arrive back.

Storti says there are three elements that help make a place feel like “home” and they are:

1. Familiar places

2. Familiar people

3. Routines and predictable patterns of interaction

I’m going to try to illustrate how I’ve experienced Storti’s definition of “home” by contrasting a time I bought ground beef for a taco dinner with friends in Cieszyn with a time I bought ground beef for a taco dinner with friends in Chicago.

1. Home is familiar places.

Cieszyn, December 2010 (before Christmas vacation): I go to buy my ground beef at a tiny butcher store where, for the past two years, I’ve gone to buy meat approximately two times a month. When I enter the store, I see that nothing is new or different from my last visit. I’d bought meat here just two weeks ago for my Thanksgiving celebrations.

Chicago, December 2010 (during Christmas vacation): I go to buy my ground beef at a tiny neighborhood store where I shopped for many years while growing up in Chicago, but it’s not somewhere I’ve shopped recently because, well, the store is in the States and I’m currently living and teaching in Poland. When I enter the store, I notice that they’ve re-arranged things a bit. I can’t remember the last time I bought meat here.

2. Home is familiar people.

Cieszyn, December 2010 (before Christmas vacation): I recognize the two people behind the counter and they recognize me because I’m a loyal customer and because I’m probably one of the only (if not the only) foreigners to buy meat here. They don’t know my name; I don’t know their names, but no doubt they remember my first visits almost two years ago when I relied almost exclusively on finger pointing. They’ve very patient and kind when I order and smile when I can say what I’d like in fairly fluent Polish. Sometimes I see the store’s employees out and about in Cieszyn.

Chicago, December 2010 (during Christmas vacation): I don’t recognize any of the people behind the counter at the butcher store and they don’t recognize me. I don’t know their names; they don't know my name. And why would they? I haven’t bought meat from this butcher in at least 2 years.

3. Home is routines and predictable patterns of interaction.

Cieszyn, December 2010 (before Christmas vacation): I hate visiting the butcher in Cieszyn because it requires me to act “aggressively assertive” and I don’t like it. I have to stand less than 1 inch behind the person in front of me or someone will dart in from behind and physically cut in front of me. I have to loudly shout out my order the second the person in front of me finishes paying or someone behind me will shout out his or her order and verbally cut in front of me. I feel a little anxious (like I always do at the butcher) but I’m here on a mission so I confidently order in Polish the number of grams I need to feed the 3 people I’ve invited over for dinner. It’s stressful for me but I know what to expect and I know how I need to behave (“aggressively assertive”) in order to get the meat I need.

Chicago, December 2010 (during Christmas vacation): I’m excited to go to a butcher in Chicago. I’m anticipating standing in a wonderfully “civilized” and orderly line. I’m looking forward to speaking in docile tones and not having the person behind me breathing down my neck or cutting ahead of me should I show 2 seconds of weakness or hesitation. I’m feeling very relaxed standing in line and then suddenly a woman tries to cut in front of me! Hey! Cutting isn’t supposed to happen in Chicago! I always tell people that Americans have great respect for "the line!" I've envisioned (and yes, romanticized) this Chicago butcher visit for months and yet here I am feeling very overwhelmed and helpless. I order in English but I’m still a little baffled and shaken up after that woman tried to cut in front of me. And suddenly I can’t remember the conversion from kilograms to pounds so I don’t quite know how many pounds I need to feed the 3 people I’ve invited over for dinner. It’s stressful for me because I thought I knew what to expect but I discover I don’t feel like I know how I need to behave ("polite" and "patient" didn't quite work out how I'd expected them to) in order to get the meat I need.

It just so happens that at this specific time in my life, I'm more "at home" buying meat in Poland than in Chicago. And that's pretty amazing when I think back to my first month here when there were days I didn't think I would ever come to call Cieszyn "home." And right now Cieszyn is my “here” and Chicago is my “there." Now I’m in Cieszyn and I say, “I’ve taught here (here = Cieszyn) for two years” but on June 1, I’ll fly to Chicago and then I’ll say, “I taught there (there = Cieszyn) for two years.” In a few weeks Chicago will become my "here" again and I'll quickly re-learn exactly how to go about ordering meat at a Chicago butcher.

I know I’m going to miss home (Cieszyn) when I go home (Chicago) and that I'm going to miss all the big things (people I love) and the little things (the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes) that made Cieszyn my home for the past two years. But this summer when I find myself feeling a little discouraged or a little displaced I'm going to remember that I felt exactly the same way when I first arrived in Cieszyn. And I'm going to put on my "explorer cap" and go out in Chicago and find the "home" that's waiting for me there. I’m going to seek out new experiences, new adventures, new challenges, new delights, new people, new favorite spots, new cultural activities, and new educational opportunities. And I'm also going to rejoice that I'm returning to all my Chicago "favorites" - family! friends! the library! theatre! lectures! yoga! Pad Thai!

In Jesting Pilate Aldous Huxley wrote: “Fishes do not marvel at water; they are too busy swimming in it.” I’m excited that with this sad-yet-exciting, wonderful-yet-a-little-scary re-entry I’m getting the chance to marvel at the “water” (i.e., Chicago) I'm going to swim in again. I can’t wait to reconnect with my old-yet-new, familiar-yet-unfamiliar home – my sweet home Chicago.