Te extraño in English means I miss you. But a more accurate and literal translation of it is you are missing from me. Since I learned this phrase four years ago in IB Spanish, it has stuck with me. This interpretation gives a better explanation for why things feel out of place when someone important to you is not with you or you are not in a familiar place. This is how I feel when I travel or am away from home for a long time. Because, though it sounds cliché, home is not always a place. Sometimes home is people.
As a kid, my family would take a vacation every summer to Bethany Beach, Delaware. We would go for about a week every year. Obviously, we loved being on vacation. But once we got towards the end of the trip, and especially on the car ride home, we would be very anxious to get home. We missed our dogs and our beds and our house and hometown, or rather they were missing from us.
When I went away to college, I was initially miserable. My parents and brother are my best friends and suddenly I was not seeing them every day and I could not spend time with them anymore. I went home after the second weekend because I could not stand to be away. Everything just felt right at home. It was comfortable and safe and familiar. I also felt better when my parents and brother came to visit me at school. Just to be with them again made me feel more at ease.
Living in Italy for five weeks was also not easy. Being in such a new place, essentially alone, made me feel small, almost insignificant. Once I got the lay of the land and started to feel like I knew the city, I became more comfortable. But something was still off. My parents and brother were not with me. It was an odd feeling because we always go on vacations with all four of us.
I felt even smaller in Paris. Though my parents were with me, I was still overwhelmed. Paris was so fast paced and twisted in every direction like a maze.
Returning home, whether from school or a trip, was and still is the best feeling. After being away for so long I realized how much I took my hometown for granted. I never appreciated it until I had to leave and learn my way around new cities and towns. I love being home and knowing how to get everywhere without relying on a GPS. I just know where to go because home is a place that belongs to me. That is a part of me.
Though it can be sad returning from a vacation or a life-changing experience away from home, there is something beautiful in being able to look back on something and think of it fondly. The contrast between a hectic and busy vacation or city to the quiet, easy life at home is rejuvenating.
The quiet especially. Though my house isn’t quiet as I live on Main Street, it is my quiet. A comforting, familiar quiet that I have grown up with and grown used to. I feel significant again at home. I feel like I get lost and go unnoticed in big cities. At home I feel seen and like I add to the atmosphere.
I am grateful for my hometown and the opportunities I have had to reflect on what it means to me and how I have taken it for granted in the past. When I am away, I do feel a part of me is gone. Not where it should be.
To my hometown, my friends and family, my dog, my house, my bed: Te extraño.