The ground at “home” is always dry. My mother, who used to garden before we moved to the great, dusty valley complains often that the rain evaporates in the atmosphere before it can ever grace her tiny, perennial flower-boxes. She has a strip of sidewalk now, instead of lawn. Before we moved to California in 2007, she spent hours hunched over in the mud and weeds, tending to the plants and complaining about the bugs and squirrels. Our current “home” is host to little nature beyond the pile of dry, dead leaves and landscaping dirt that collects at the curb, unswept by rain or wind. In the winter, snow used to fall like a clean blanket over the frozen mud and matted, frosty grass. It inaugurated a whole new season of imaginative play and warm moments of family unity. The school break had been a holy and exciting time. My mother used to join us outside, warning my brother and I not to step where plants would eventually grow when the snow melted back into the earth. We would spend all day out there in the bright, natural white expanse, building the fantasy universes as we had seen on TV and in movies. We would play as Star Wars characters exploring Hoth, archeologists digging for ancient artifacts just below the glassy ice, or adults selling snowy wares to imaginary consumers – taking pauses only to warm our ruddy faces and dance to my mother’s playlists in the warm, bright living room, static energy collecting under our socks. Magical.
It’s different now. No snow falls, and the dry dusty nothingness leaves much to be desired in terms of magic. The holiday doesn’t quite feel like a holiday in San Jose, and “home” just doesn’t feel like home. Maybe this is a product of growing up. Maybe home stops feeling like home after your first semester in university. Maybe this is my first taste of the adulthood I have so desperately desired since I was 10 years old. Maybe – or maybe it was simply that this was my final Christmas in San Jose.
At the end of the calendar year, my parents will be making their highly anticipated move back to Canada, ultimately closer to where I am studying. My mother has simply grown tired of the emptiness that has defined her life for the last nine years. She, too, feels the absence of magic, and the sardonic nature of California’s unwelcome warmth. Perhaps this is why home just didn’t feel like home anymore, and as the vacation dragged on into its 10th day, I found myself itching for schoolwork. I was missing my new friends. That magic I had felt around the holidays not a decade ago had rekindled at school, where I had felt my first snow in nine years and danced to playlists with friends. I built myself a home in Kingston, where the ground is always wet and cold. Soon, my parents will join me up north, and we can start again at building a home that truly feels and looks like home.