Of late, I have been using the word home in several different connotations.
First of all, without a doubt, my home is the country that I love, the country where I spent my entire adult life, the country where an immigrant with no money but a reasonably high IQ has the proverbial Dream within just a few years’ reach. Only one such country in the whole wide world – America.
But home is also where you make your bed day in and day out, even if that happens to be an ocean and several time zones away, even if the place is rented, even if after almost a year you still cannot get used to some ridiculous absences of simple comforts. So, England is my home as well, if only you go by a Freudian slip or two that I made while discussing my schedule of “flying home” and going to work this Monday.
Then, interestingly, I keep referring to my long-sold house in New Jersey as “home” (it should be noted that in Russian, the same word translates as both home and house). As in, “Kimmy, do you recognize where we are? Of course, we are right by our home”…
But coming back to England after ten days in the States, I realize that home is truly where your heart is. And despite our certainly stimulating and rewarding existence, punctuated by regular continental excursions, my heart is undoubtedly with the great U S of A. Could be that the aforementioned excursions have already created a level of saturation that makes infrequent rendezvous with friends and family all the more enticing. Could be that I am simply too much a creature of comforts.
Anyway, I am back in the Old World after a veritably whirlwind expedition. I managed to schedule spending some time with many close friends and relatives (and if I did not manage to spend time with you, my sincere apologies – I decidedly had very little time to work with), and chanced upon a couple of fun occasions. Even mild philosophical disagreements with some members of my immediate family and an entirely wasteful visit to our New York offices did not put a damper on good times.
But the week of greetings was simultaneously the week of renewed farewells as well. And I will be by my very lonesome for the next three weeks, which emphatically adds to the bit of melancholy.
I will post several nuggets about our holiday in the following days, but at present, I am letting myself succumb to jet-lag.
One final note. Having been sufficiently scorched by the hot and humid Northeastern weather, I decided to go to work today in a short-sleeved shirt. The sun was shining in the early afternoon, but the air was not overly warm. And on my way back home, the cold British wind has given me a well-deserved welcome. Brrrrrr.
Apropos of
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