The Meaning of Home

on an early-morning train from Rotterdam to Amsterdam

I’ve been gone for three and a half weeks now, and on some days homesickness creeps in like condensation on the windows of the ferry carrying me across the Gulf of Finland. So how does one deal with homesickness?

I think it depends on what home means to you, the specific things about your home that bring you comfort. Because home, for me, means a lot of different things: it means being in a place where people know me, a place where I am in control of my own life and actions, a place where I feel safe and am treated with kindness. That means that home isn’t just one place for me, and it hasn’t been since I left Texas for Chapel Hill.

trying not to get sand in my new sneakers at Pikakari Beach, Estonia

I of course feel at home in my parents’ house. But the place that I felt the most at home in my whole life—my beloved apartment in Chapel Hill—isn’t there for me anymore. Of course, it wasn’t the apartment, with the broken dishwasher and the couch that my cat Boo shredded, that made my apartment feel like home. It was love, from Boo and from my friends. It was the feeling of control and purpose, from my classes, from orchestra, from my jobs.

When I graduated, I had an existential crisis, because I felt like I was losing my home. I was scared to leave Chapel Hill because I was scared I’d never find anywhere that felt that much like home again. I’m in between lives, living a kind of “rootless existence” (do you know what movie that’s a quote from?), not tied to any one place by those most serious of adult things: a career, a husband, or a child. I’ll find those things, I’ll build a life somewhere, but not yet.

repping UNC in Ålesund, Norway

So, I could say that, right now, home is nowhere for me, but I choose to see things from the other side, that instead home is everywhere. Because in this moment, for twenty-two-year-old Charlsie, home isn’t a place or even a person. It’s a collection of feelings--connection, inspiration, creativity, joy, belonging, control, wonder, freedom, and independence--and I can find one or more of those feelings, somehow, anywhere I go.

The memories that generate these feelings are my most valuable souvenirs.

outside an old Russian palace in Tallinn

So what has home been for me these past few weeks? I’ll tell you. It’s been:

· a pile of golden leaves in Tartu that could very well have fallen from the trees in Chapel Hill.

· a Dutch security officer treating me with a motherly kind of gentleness as she patted down my cast at Schiphol Airport.

· feeding crumbs from my sandwich to the tiny birds hopping around the harbor in Bergen.

· Old El Paso enchilada sauce in the grocery store in Rotterdam.

· connecting my phone to “eduroam” when I pass the University of Bergen and in the library at the University of Tartu—eduroam is the same kind of Wifi found at universities all over the world and the kind we used at UNC.

· meeting another solo American girl in Rotterdam and discussing Cal joining the ACC.

· a hug from an older Canadian lady I befriended, along with her husband, on a bus tour in Ålesund.

· hearing music students practicing at the University of Tartu—I might as well have been in the basement of Hill Hall.

· the calendar with pictures of Boo that I tape up in every room I sleep in.

· a little boy with a NASA hat walking past me with his dad in Tallinn.

· listening to the fourth movement of Sibelius 2 after I started humming it at the composer’s monument in Helsinki.

· watching the Estonian Symphony play because orchestras have the same funny quirks everywhere.

· a painting of a bull in The Hague that might as well be a cow by the side of the road in New Mexico.

· the baristas at my favorite coffee shop in Tallinn singing along to a song from the soundtrack of The Devil Wears Prada.

· a dog carrying a stick way too big for him.

· describing Buc-ee’s to a long-haired British dude in Rotterdam and showing him a picture of my family with the beaver statue on Christmas Day.

· schoolchildren waving at me from inside their classroom in Tartu and then laughing like they’ve just pranked me.

· falling asleep on the bottom bunk of a bed in Tallinn, hugging two stuffed Poohs I’ve had for more than fifteen years.

· a cat eating a chicken nugget on the sidewalk.

the Chapel Hill-esque Tartu, Estonia

And one last thought that brings me solace when I’m homesick: I am my own home. Like a turtle who carries its shell on its back. I’m capable of comforting myself, of talking myself down and hyping myself up (sometimes I have to do this out loud). I’m capable of solving problems that come my way, of taking care of myself physically and emotionally. I am my most faithful companion! So, no matter where I am in the world, I’m never truly away from home.