home

Since we started college, no visit to home has been unaccompanied by conversations about how it feels to be back home and what it means. As more time goes by, the visits become fewer and more far between, and the conversations about them longer. I don't see Fremont being a place that I will be again, outside of the holidays. It won't likely ever again be my home again in the sense of living here for any extended period of time, not even summers. I may end up in the Bay Area again, but that could be anywhere--not this street, not this place.

They say home is where your heart is, but I'm not sure my heart is here either. Not because I don't love Fremont. It always surprises me when I come home, how beautiful Fremont is. This small town with few claims to fame, with little to do, with little to see. One of the first things I did here was run around my neighborhood in the morning. The love I felt for this home was so immediately palpable; it breathed as I breathed. So much of it came from familiarity, because if you know me you know it takes forever for my surroundings to become familiar to me. Even now, I'm little aware of the street names and how they relate to each other. But I recognize things and it doesn't take much to re-feel them. The route to my piano teacher's house and the church where we played our recitals, the steps where my first boyfriend and I used to kiss, my old junior high. It has been gorgeously bright and warm enough to run comfortably in a T-shirt. December is a nice month here, where the hills are just transitioning from brown to green, so you see them in all their shades. Seeing Christmas lights on houses and decorations in the yard, during the day instead of night as intended, gives this small cove of the town an endearing charm. Instead of magic, it's real, and sweet. Fremont's not hip or urban or quirky or worldly or especially quaint, and it doesn't keep anything hidden that makes you want to seek out its corners. It just is what it is, a place where people live.

Maybe for that reason, home has become a place where I fix things. I've written earlier about how I hang onto broken things as long as possible, but when I come home I'm more amenable to changing them. I finally switched from rain-worn phone to my old phone so that it won't die on me after a few hours anymore. My family gave me a new laptop for Christmas to replace my only somewhat functional computer of the past few years. Home is where my mom sews buttons back onto my coat, where I finally get clothes dry-cleaned, where I cut my hair and go to the dentist, where I finally get a pair of dress pants so I can stop wearing the ones from high school. Home is where I began running, and where I returned to it during difficult times. It's clear that much of this is about convenience and familiarity, but convenience is not easy to come by and familiarity inherently doesn't happen instantly. Some things aren't so easily mended, but what comes first is the desire to mend, to maintain or move forward. I might carry my heart wherever I go, but this will always be a place to move around the pieces, to put them back in place or make them anew.