Home
I’ve been trying to write about it, but the attempt is kind of faltering, trying to compress and expand. So:
Home is vacation, home is getting picked up at the airport and listening to my sister talk furiously and emphatically. Home is laughing. Home is where my family lives, where my mother talks and grills kalbi and sets out toasted sheets of seaweed and listens to loud Korean pop and my sister never changes out of her pajamas and plays a video game and makes precise X-acto cuts of paper for Christmas cards and my dad watches a movie and feeds the dogs and my grandma fans out a hand of solitaire and eats cookies and watches soap operas. Home is an endless stretch of palm trees on every street. Home is scrub and sand and chaparral and mountains and the dark Pacific. Home is when my best friend and I hit the multiple and various malls and watch movies and talk about everything and get in the car and stand out in the cold, never quite making it out of the parking lot because there is too much to talk about. But home is not just California, home is elsewhere, too, home is shorthand for who I love, for that feeling: hi, yes, you belong here.
