That's quite touching. I feel the same way about Cyprus, the reasons for which I am still trying to figure out.
I left home at 19 for military service. Moved again, after marrying, five years later, moved again 18 months later, then again, and again, and again, and again, and once again to bring me back to my home state.
When I left home the first time, I remember waiting for the recruiter to pick me up at a bus stop in a nearby city, at 4AM. My mom drove me and waited with me, and the whole time, she was sniffling and wiping tears, and honestly, I couldn't wait to leave, and it wasn't even excitement, I just felt I'd lived there long enough and time to move on. Restless. Always had been.
Married and lived amongst my wife's people for two years, the finest folks I've ever had the fortune to know, and I couldn't wait to leave when we got orders to Texas.
Same thing with Texas. I wanted to leave there so badly, we got up in the middle of the night and left, instead of waiting until morning.
That was when we moved to the UK, 1992, and moved again, in-country, in 1994, before coming back to the US in 1995.
My point in relating all that...I always left a place, even a place like my birth home or my wife's home in upstate NY, places where I loved and was loved, with a can't-get-me-outta-here-fast-enough attitude. Always going, always looking ahead, and I was always genuinely puzzled when people talked about missing "home" or when I'd come home on leave and my mom would cry every time I left again.
Honestly, I always felt I was visiting a place out of a sense of duty, not because I missed it. I'd come home and Mom would send me on an errand in town, and I'd see a school friend down the grocery store aisle...and I'd avoid them like the plague. Didn't want to look back. I'd get home and she'd say, "I'll bet you had fun driving by the old school, and the movie house, and the reservoir," and I'd confess that I'd done none of those things, nor did I feel the need to. All in the past.
That changed when we got to the UK. Instantly, and I mean from the moment I literally smelled my first English air, on the tarmac at RAF Mildenhall, at about 5AM, on 21 October 1992, I felt...connected in a way I'd never felt before. Ever.
You know how, if you wear glasses things are blurry, then you put them on and it's magically in focus? You can tell what you're looking at, more or less, but you put those specs on, and everything is sharp and clear? That's how it felt. Suddenly, like I'd drunk a magic potion, things in my mind just fell into place.
I was home. Home. Everything made sense. No confusion. Total clarity. That's home.
You can believe, when we had to rotate back to the US, I got to feel for the first time what everyone else felt about their home. I was devastated. I imagine there are still fingernail marks in the jetbridge at Heathrow from where they had to drag me onto the plane.
Ever since then, going back, it's always felt like going home, and as soon as I step outside (nowadays, that happens getting on the shuttle to get to Budget to pick up a car, I get that same feeling from 1992. Complete and thorough calm.
That's home. I don't even question anymore. That's home.
@TastyReuben and @epicuric this may or may not resonate with you, but I believe in reincarnation,
I don't, though I have had one experience, a very profound one, in England, of course, that I generally keep to myself, lest someone try and have me committed.
