December.
I’ll Be Home for Christmas.
2020.
If only in my dreams.
Where are you from? I always had a hard time answering this question. When I lived in New York City and people would ask where I’m from my response was always I’m from New Jersey. Then sometimes they’d ask, but where are you really from? I would usually respond with I’m Filipino, but I was born in America.
When I lived in San Francisco and people would ask where I’m from I initially would say New York, because that’s where I lived for 12 years before moving to SF. Then I would say but I grew up in New Jersey.
I never adjusted to life in San Francisco. I always longed for home. Which for me, at that time, was New York. NYC was the first home I chose. I moved there for college and met Jeff there. Anytime we would go back to NY it just felt right, my body would immediately relax. I always felt on edge in SF, unless we were in the Presidio or Lands End. When we had kids we started to think more about where we would want to raise our family.
Growing up in New Jersey I had so much family nearby. My dad has 4 brothers and they all had at least 2 kids. All together there were 13 cousins. So for every holiday gathering there were at least 23 people in a house at one time, often there were more. Jeff grew up in Scranton with family close by too. He would spend Christmas Eve at his grandparents and then Christmas Day at his aunt’s house.
After having Deacon we talked about moving back home a lot. But where was home for us? Was it New York where we met, or was it New Jersey where I grew up, or was it Scranton where Jeff grew up? Then we thought, what if we chose a new home?
Our first Christmas in California was three years ago, the year we became parents. We decided to go to Truckee for the holiday. It was magical, a winter wonderland, I remember thinking this could be our new family home.
This will be the first Christmas at our new home in Truckee, and in our dreams we’ll also be celebrating the holiday in the Philippines, New Jersey, New York, Scranton, and San Francisco because all those places are also home.
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Wait, I’m not done. I thought I was after that last paragraph but then I took the best yoga class of my life. A winter solstice flow on Baker Beach. My last yoga class in the city I became a mother. It was 75 minutes of my mind, body, and spirit connecting with nature. My feet sunk into the sand with each pose as I looked off into the mountains ahead. Then we walked towards the ocean and dipped our toes in the water. The teacher instructed us to put our hands on our lower abdomen and dance to the beat of the music. As I moved my body and felt my c-section scar I started to cry.
At that moment I realized I’m not leaving my home in San Francisco for my new home in Truckee. Home is not a city or a town or a state or a country. It’s not even planet earth, it’s bigger than that. You can’t see home, you can only feel it, because home is inside of you.
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One Year Later.
2021.
Because home is inside of you.
“True belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.” — Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown
I’ve lived in Truckee for a full year now and we just celebrated our second Christmas in our home. Are we able to call ourselves Tahoe locals now?
When we moved last year we had some welcoming and some unwelcoming interactions with our neighbors.
“You people have run the prices up so high on housing and the cost of living. Guess what. There are very few workers here to take care of your stuff. Guess you will have to do it yourself. You created the problem. Deal with it.” — A neighbor on Nextdoor
We moved from San Francisco to Truckee so we knew we’d inevitably encounter an unwelcome interaction.
The same thing happened when we moved from NYC to SF in 2015. I remember taking an Uber and the driver asked how long I lived in San Francisco. I told him I just moved from New York. He responded, you’re the reason it costs so much to live here now!
I was initially nervous to meet new people in our new home town. Mainly because we moved during a pandemic and before vaccines existed but also because I wasn’t sure if we really belonged here. But then I remembered: “You were born worthy of love and belonging.”
I bought Brené Brown’s new book, Atlas of the Heart, for everyone in my family this Christmas. Paola Sánchez Valdez, a formerly undocumented immigrant, shared her story in the book: “I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like I belong to this country or another, but what I do know is that I belong to myself.”
It’s funny how forgetful I can be. It was only a year ago that I learned you can’t see home, you can only feel it, because home is inside of you.
“As a parent, my goal is to help my children believe in and belong to themselves, and to know that, no matter what, they always belong at home.” — Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown
My boys are Filipino Welsh Americans. Sometimes I wonder if it would be better if they grew up somewhere more diverse. But we love it here. One day I was driving in the car with Deacon and looking out the window he said, Mama I love Truckee, I want to live here forever! Me too Deacon, me too.
So I invite you to hop on board the steam train with me. Final destination: home. And remember that home is not a place, it is a feeling, because home is inside of you.
