Lessons from Returns
by Wendy Gao
“Arrival home” is a synonym for “return.”
Long ago, my uncle once asked me if I knew what it meant to 回家 (huí jiā), which literally translates to “return home.” I was eight years old, spending the summer with my dad’s family in China to learn Chinese, and at the time, I thought 家 (jiā) meant our house in American suburbia, and 回 (huí) meant a long airplane flight with movies and airline food. He laughed and explained that to return home is a sacred pilgrimage back to the grandparents’ home to convene with extended family and pay tribute to the centerpieces of filial piety, the original hearth, our roots. Today, he said, 我们要回家 (wǒmen yào huí jiā). We are returning home. Even me? I wondered.
At my grandparents’, my sister and I sat awkwardly in the middle of a storybook scene — uncles playing cards amid cigarette smoke, aunties preparing dinner between gossip, cousins entertaining babies, and my grandparents, proud onlookers of it all in their regal chairs not unlike thrones. I always felt out of place during the few times I took part in this holy renewal of filial bonds. I didn’t belong or fit in the perfect harmony of familial cacophony. How could I “return” to a place I was visiting for the first time, where I couldn’t understand the local dialect or when I couldn’t even use chopsticks correctly?
In the time since that summer, both sets of my grandparents passed and went the starlit way of our ancestors. Neither of my parents will ever make that hallowed journey back to their parents. There is nothing I would not give for my parents to 回家. Now the fireplace is cold; our ship is adrift without its anchor. How desperately I wish to sit at the feet of my grandparents, even if awkwardly. I’ve thought long and hard about how I would answer my uncle if he asked me the same question today. 家 means “home,” but it also means “house” and “family.” The closest that English comes to expressing this sentiment is the quote, “Home is where the heart is,” but even that fails to capture the eloquence of the single character and the intimate entwining of family and home. In English, a house is different from a home, and both can exist without a family. But in Chinese, there is no house without a home or family. Returning home, returning to the hearth, returning to family – they are one and the same.
It has taken me this long, but I finally have an answer for my uncle.
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Sometimes leaving means growing, and returning is the proof.
Growing up is a funny thing. As a kid, becoming “grown” feels distinct and definitive. But when you’re on the cusp of childhood and adulthood, the line is blurry, not markedly triumphant or glorious. Growing up isn’t getting your license, turning 18, or going to college. It’s sad and nostalgic, unexpected and without warning. It creeps up on you until you’re looking back, wondering when you crossed the threshold.
I was nervous when I visited my hometown for the first time in two years after I moved. I was scared I wouldn’t recognize the neighborhoods I grew up in or the people I grew up with. But the names of the streets we drove on hadn’t changed, the buildings we passed were the same, and the city looked the way it still lives in my memory. Over tempura, sushi, rice, and soy sauce, my childhood friends and I cracked jokes, talked about clothes, and dished the latest tea. Bizarrely, it was like I had never moved. We didn’t talk about my new life, my dabbling in the climate strikes, or why I quit playing soccer. If the day I left became frozen in time, my return was the unpause. I laughed, said all the right things, and posed for pictures the same as always, but inside, I felt suffocated – like going back to elementary school and trying to squeeze into a desk that used to feel so big. Maybe I was the one who had changed.
The thing about growing up is it’s not a moment or even a long process; it’s a state of acceptance. I was sixteen-years-old realizing that I had outgrown my childhood, my first home, and all the people and places I had known with it.
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Return means “I will come back.”
Leaving home for school is always bittersweet, but even more so now. Loss lingers in the air at home, making me cling to all I love with closed fists. I know I haven’t been away for long, but I’m already counting the days till I drive home to northern Virginia for a reprieve from fourth year and the bustle of life on Grounds. I’ll brush up on my Chinglish and give my beloved dog pets to compensate for being gone for so long. My dad will make slightly watered-down coffee in the morning. My mom will have my favorite zongzi flavors from the Great Wall Supermarket, even though it’s not the Dragon Boat Festival. I tell myself that leaving does not mean losing. I’ll 回家 soon.
