Whenever I dream of “home” I dream of the old house, specifically the kitchen, which was always my favourite room.
I remember the walls yellow and later orange-red, the cherry wood table and matching chairs stained with a blue accent that I knew was beautiful long before I was old enough to develop taste in furniture. I wonder if there are still math problems visible on the soft wood when the sun shines just right. I wonder if they can still be felt when you rub your finger along a seemingly smooth surface. It was always bright in the kitchen, even when it was dark outside, and I remember the upheaval of removing one pantry to build a desk and replacing the floor that children and toys had long treated too harshly.
The kitchen was the geographic centre of the old house, the first room you saw from the front door, and the first room you entered after bursting through the mudroom door in playclothes, smelling of sun and sweat or peeling off layers of snowpants and gloves. We did our homework at the kitchen table, ate dinner as a family, played board games, sat around to share the worst news and the best news. Almost every photo that we have from a birthday or holiday was taken in the kitchen. Every gathering with friends and extended family started and ended in the kitchen.
We always had a radio there and we listened to talk radio in the morning and music in the afternoon. Sometimes the bird was out on the island when we got home from school, and late in the evenings, the dog turned the island into a race track. The kitchen was the part of the house we lived in, and it’s the room I picture when I think about growing up.
I don’t remember much from my dream last night, but I was back in the old house, back in the old kitchen. I haven’t been inside since I moved to Malaysia nine years ago, shortly after which my parents sold the house and moved across town. I drove by once and soon I’ll drive by again to show it to someone who has only seen it through Street View on Google Maps. The photo there is of a house where I still lived, the car in the driveway not yet my brother’s. I wonder what it looks like now. I wonder what parts of it are best-loved now.
The kitchen is the room I always want to see when I visit a home for the first time. That’s the room I want to be in, the room where I feel most invited and most comfortable. Guests are shown first to other spaces, but kitchen parties are always the best parties. Time in someone’s kitchen is intimate, cozy, personal, and I think there’s some love there, too. It’s in the kitchen where we work alongside one another, where we see what’s not so tidy, where we take raw ingredients and make them into something magical.
It’s no surprise that the kitchen in my parents’ “new” house is the room I’ve spent the most time, the room I like best. It’s the first room you see from the side door, which is the only door they use, and it’s the room that contains the daily traces of people – reading materials left on the counter, coffee cups out ready for use, recipes tucked under the fruit bowl.
Last night I dreamed of the old house, which is always the case when I dream of “home”. My dream started and ended in the kitchen, and as always, it took me right back.
Every so often there are moment that remind us of the groups we are fully, intrinsically, unquestionably part of . . . and the groups we are not. The groups where, for one reason or another, we stand a little bit on the outside. This is not necessarily a negative thing; we cannot be an invested member in all of our groups, simply because there’s not enough of us to go around. Furthermore, we might not want to be so deeply involved, perhaps because this would present us with obligations that we are not interested in or prepared to shoulder. It can be painfully difficult to come to terms with the groups that we want to be part of that do not want us, but that is not of interest in this post. Rather, this post is about recent circumstances in which group membership was unspoken but thrown into focus.
Language and Culture
Before I moved overseas, I helped out with the international student exchange program at my school. This opened my eyes to the question of integration: How do I help young people integrate into a group that is relatively homogeneous . . . and very different from what they are used to? This question changed in form when I had the opportunity to work in a very diverse environment in which integration was a question caught between language and culture. (Danau Tanu’s phenomenal Growing Up in Transit deserves mention here for its impact on the way I think about schools and language.)
In my somewhat nomadic adulthood, I find that language plays a more important role in my interactions and friendships than I would have guessed. For example, there is a difference in the shared understanding that I immediately sense with those who come from the same linguistic background as I do. I almost always know who is American (accents aside) based on the words that they choose in certain situations, or the way that they explain past experiences. Having worked with so many Brits, Canadians, Australians, and Kiwis over the years has tuned me into the differences in our cultural contexts, and therefore also informed the words that I use when talking to certain people. My favourite example here is “college”. This has a meaning in the US that does not match the meaning used by English speakers, and sharing the context is important. Telling a story about a high school experience needs a different explanation when I’m speaking with people who had a similar educational experience to mine. I am immediately “in” with those people, and forever “a little bit outside” of others.
A few weeks ago, my partner and I had dinner with friends and talk turned to just that – our school experiences. Not only did I have to ask clarification questions about what was clearly a shared understanding among the others, but I also had to provide background context before much of what I said could make sense. I laughed along with them as we talked, fully aware that the picture in my head of their world was likely as inaccurate as their picture of mine. The pleasure is in finding common ground despite the differences, and seeing my own experiences through new eyes.
Things like this happen so often. There are many instances in which my partner and I interpret actions or events differently, to say nothing of the differences in our language. Because I am the one who has moved, it is my responsibility to adapt to where I am rather than expecting to find what I chose to leave elsewhere. I find that I am sometimes caught unexpectedly unaware simply because I didn’t know that there could be another idea, interpretation, or action. I am simply “not from here” and haven’t run into this particular circumstance yet. A little bit outside, as it were.
I’m not sure when one begins to feel at home in a culture, though I have had years of experiences being surprised at what I found when I returned to North America. Sometimes I know how to live the way people in Germany live and I do it automatically, and sometimes it’s like seeing yourself in a mirror and forgetting that you got a haircut. It’s familiar but not quite right.
Social Groups
And now for a completely different example, one in which no one is talking about the groups that everyone knows are at the centre of the conversation.
In order to make plans for the summer holidays, I sent a message to a group of people who I had previously talked with about plans. The daily lives of these individuals are intertwined and I am the one clearly on the outside, a result of the choice made to live somewhere else. It is not a secret that this group interacts without me, that I fit in only at the seldom moments when I’m around. If I ever had different expectations, I lost them a long time ago. And I’m no more present for this group than they are for me; we interact infrequently, as has been the habit since before I knew it was a habit, and otherwise, it’s pretty silent.
For that reason, it didn’t entirely come as a surprise when my message went unanswered. I had anticipated precisely what I did not like, which is becoming a topic of conversation that I was not privy to. Being outside of this group means that I am not privy to very much, but it was obvious what was happening when I received no replies to a message that, among people who are part of each other’s lives, would have received replies. That the group responded (by not responding) en masse suggests that a discussion had occurred, a course of action deliberately taken.
This is a situation in which a group was clearly more than just one group, and being outside the group meant not being in the group at all. It’s interesting because this fact was always simmering under the surface and now it is fully out in the open, precisely by not being open. One of the things I learned when first working to integrate groups of students was that friendships thrive on shared experiences; it is difficult to feel connected to people when our shared experiences are few and far between, and especially when, looking back, what was ostensibly shared was only shared at the acquiescence of the group, and not those standing a little bit outside.
Reflections
Our daily lives are enmeshed in relationships, both those we’ve chosen and those we have been forced into, for a range of reasons. Building and maintaining relationships is a process with which we are all familiar, and it governs the way we structure our world. I love teaching the human relationships topic in psychology because it’s about the everyday experiences of all of us, immediately relatable and immediately captivating.
Maybe it’s because of teaching psychology that I am fascinated by the inner workings of my own relationships, and try to be conscious of the role I (and others) play in each of them. I think the important lesson here is that relationships are complex and there are more stories to explain them than the ones I can tell; just because I’ve interpreted a situation a certain way doesn’t mean someone else has. Humility plays an important role here, too. We must be humble enough to listen to other viewpoints, as well as confident enough to express when we disagree. We must be vulnerable enough to let others in, and strong enough to stand on our own. It’s a delicate balance, being human, and that is what we doubtless share, regardless of who is on the inside and who stands a little bit outside.
I didn’t want to read it not because I didn’t want to read it but because you gave it to me and I was tired of fitting into whatever form you chose for me.
So I held it in my hands and looked at it put it away took it out again in spite of myself. I didn’t want to read it. I knew where it would go when I was done. I knew where I would leave it so I didn’t have to look at it anymore.
I was angry, and surprised that I was angry, and not surprised because I’ve been angry. It’s not the first time, and I no longer know where the truth ends and the anger begins. I no longer know what the truth is and why it tastes different now.
But so ferocious? So much red energy, so much white-hot attention? There was suddenly so much space and in the space I thought of things I had never thought of before and in the space I may have changed the story, may have rewritten the part I played and the part you played, and maybe it wasn’t all that it had been, and maybe looking in from the outside was absolutely right.
Or so I’d been told before. And the reflection in the mirror was uncannily similar. Didn’t you do that to me once, too?
But you can’t make my decisions anymore so I read it. And I’m glad that I did. But I won’t thank you for it. I won’t be, again, what you chose for me. I won’t say, “But that’s not me!” for fear of the response I had once before when your face opened into a question that seemed to say, “But I wanted you to be.”
Photos, travels, musings, and ideas on education by someone trying to make the world a better and more peaceful place
By Rebecca Michelle 