"Home..."

Some say it is where the heart is... or maybe it's with the one(s) you love. In any case, for me, home is no one place. Though I had never been to Hawaii before in my life, I found that it was an easy place to call home for one week. The familiar company of my mother, still chain smoking and claiming that these non-smoking restaurants are discriminating, therefore forcing her to leave the table for periodic sessions of "respiratory therapy" (Mom lingo for smoke break); my sister roasting herself to a deep golden brown on the beach and resolving to move to Hawaii once and for all to the chagrin of my brother-in-law (she says this every beach we go to); and then Eric, stuck in the middle of all this estrogen and thus needing to make disgusting "boy" comments for attention, i.e. "Hey Joce, this looks like a deep fried spider!" referring to the calamari I'm popping in my mouth. Shopping, overeating, beaching, smoking, complaining about the smoke, with some slight variations in between-- these are the typical mantra of our family vacations.

From the time I was little, EVERY family vacation we have ever taken has been to a beach. The Jersey shore was our "regular" destination-- we'd rent a house for a week or two on Long Beach Island and have all our friends and family from home visit and stay with us... always a vacation for everyone except my mom, who was entertaining everyone. When my parents were together, we were the inevitable hosts. I hardly remember going to dinner to others' houses or being invited on vacation with other families. It was always my mom doing the cooking and inviting. Perhaps everyone simply accepted that she was "the hostess with the mostest." No one can do it better.

My mother and sister are just "beach people." I tell my sister if only she'd live in an oven she'd be happy. Apart from Long Beach Island, for a few years we were vacationing in Fripp Island, SC, the Outer Banks, NC, with occasional trips to Florida, Ocean City, MD, Fenwick, DE, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. ALL BEACHES. Until I went to London on spring break as a sophomore in college, I'd never been on a non-beach bound vacation. Hawaii, then, was a natural choice and another reason it felt like home. But it wasn't just the company or the destination, this time, but also the feeling of coming back to my home country. Hawaii, be it closer to Japan or not, is still America, with English-speaking people, too-big portions of food, overweight people blocking the sunsets, snotty New Yorkers (yes, they are even in Hawaii!), slabs of meat you cut with a knife, the thrill of a sale at Banana Republic. This is home, too. Even the monster of a rental car we had felt normal. Just to be riding in a car on the wide roads of the States (for some reason I was not permitted to drive for "insurance purposes") felt so familiar, and in the midst of my mom's cigarette smoke and my sister singing off-key to the radio, we might as well have been back in Nazareth or Baltimore.

So maybe "home" is a sense of familiarity relative to somewhere not so familiar. The people, surroundings, or a combination of all contribute. And now I'm at the airport in Maui en route to another strange home. P will be gone for one more week, so the place will be strangely quiet. Though tonight when I return (or tomorrow--figuring the plus 19 hours), M will be at my place for her last night in Tokyo before departing for London. I'll see her off and then go to my host family's place in Toyota for the New Year. I'm half-wishing I'd planned it for a less hectic, tired time, but hell, I'm still young and genki. I'm sure I can ganbaru thru another 3 days of family time! By the way, it's hard to think of a more appropriate ending to a family vacation than sunrise over the mountains of Maui thru the airport window...!
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