Home is not a place, it is a feeling
Home is not necessarily a warm harbor. We have learned to break down the myth of “home” and are unwilling to surrender to the previous generation’s definition of success and self-repression. To grow up, to be free, to be highly mobile, and before pressing the pause button, young people leave the country and look forward to a future that meets their expectations.
But after the epidemic, words such as mobility, distance, intimacy, etc., seem to be redefined. “When I say ‘distance’, I don’t just mean physical distance in kilometers, but how easy it is to traverse that distance,” wrote British author David Soloy. People who love to be alone and can’t afford to be alone for a long time, John Freeman wrote during the US lockdown: “I need to see people, I need to be seen, yes, hugs and greetings, I need to use that A faculty that would kill me of thirst if it was shut down.”
The home has also been transformed from a dark object of competition to a more complex image. Under the epidemic prevention, there is always a time when the wanderer who has a hard time returning home, wants to escape back to the physical memory for comfort, such as temperature, smell, and the feeling of interdependence between people.
Not long ago, Shan Du launched a solicitation of “How long have you not been home” to readers, and today I will share some of them. By writing down their experiences and feelings at the moment, they feel the meaning of home, a time that is missing.
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@With signal (no signal version)
I haven’t been home for three years. It feels like I’ve lost my connection to my past , like I’ve been airdropped to this point in time.
@Marvin
Since returning to Shanghai on February 9, I haven’t been able to go home again… I am in the Yangtze River Delta, but even now, returning home is an unattainable dream. I can’t bear the possible accusations of maliciously returning home with “drugs”, although I have been in a low-risk epidemic-free community.
Mom and Dad are on video every day, but my 2022 plan was to go back and watch them every month… Dad is 86, Mom is 80. I just want to spend more time with them, help them make a meal, eat and chat together, and watch TV together at night. If I washed my hair in the shower at night, Dad would pull out the hair dryer and make sure to dry it for me.
The streets and alleys of my hometown may not be what they were when I left. The city is completely different. I can only come back again and again to get to know and miss my beloved. But it must be different from those cities seen in other hurried business trips, and it is not something that any strategy can easily get. Red-skinned duck, fried jelly, grandma ‘s beef noodles, malatang, I believe in my hometown when I think of it .
At the end of May, when I had been under lockdown in Shanghai for more than two months, my sister sent me a photo. In winter, in front of my parents’ house, my sister and my mother were smiling and hugging each other, and my father was standing behind with a smile on his reading glasses. , the morning sun shines warmly on our family. My sister said: I miss you.
Ah, this is a photo of me laughing and laughing with my parents before I went back to Shanghai for Chinese New Year. I burst into tears.
@.
It’s been a long time since I went back. I miss the cakes made by my grandmother, the braised pork and the fried vegetables that my aunt made. There is also the smell of smoke on grandpa’s coat when I was a child, and the feeling of being wrapped in grandpa’s coat.
Movie “Like Father Like Son”
@AbearClaireee
Coordinates Germany, left home on July 17, 2020, two years to today. During the period, I bought a flight ticket, but the circuit breaker canceled the trip. Later, I found out that I didn’t leave. Two weeks later, there were several positive cases in Ningbo, and it was blocked for a while. Now it seems that there is hope that I can go back, but there are still many uncertain factors. This morning at six o’clock in the morning, I dreamed of returning to my hometown, but in my dream I returned in a mess. The days in a foreign country passed slowly like this. It turns out that people don’t necessarily want to go home, they don’t have to. But when I’m alone, I miss my elderly parents, and I miss the sense of security at home that I can spend my life like this without worrying about it.
@zhangjiayu
I haven’t been home for half a year, and I seem to be used to this dandelion-like life these years.
In theory, I live in the lively Changsha, but I only have a rest day to return to Changsha. The heat, the red genes, the more beautiful the night, and the addiction to entertainment made up my impression of Changsha, but my favorite is the gardenia blooming on the roadside in June. There is no hometown, a single green plant stands beside the road like an army.
Every year on May 1st and 11th, I choose to go home. The Spring Festival must be my return home rule for the past 10 years. It seems that my parents are used to it, they miss me, I know. The fate of my life has created my restless character. I can’t live the life of an ordinary person in the eyes of my parents. I’m poor, I’m not motivated, I spend a lot of money, I don’t fall in love, I refuse to marry, I hate children, I hate it False vanity falsehood. I’ve grown into a strange person, and I think I’m doing fine, but it shouldn’t be like that in the eyes of others.
Every time I think of my grandma, I miss home the most, as if she still lives in that small yard with a big tree at the door. The houses standing side by side recorded my happiest days.
When I heard the song “Love is Beautiful”, I felt homesick. I had eight classes in high school, the two hours between dinner and self-study, the school’s song, the crimson sunset, the green playground, the broken The throbbing before the cocoon.
When I see the clear sky and white clouds, I feel homesick. I think of the midsummer in Dalian, the smell of salty and wet sea breeze, all the friends from that year have dispersed, and some people have no home to go back to.
When it snows heavily in winter, I miss home the most. The snow in the northeast is so pleasant and crisp, and the angle of the drifting down is so romantic and unrestrained. The cold air was inhaled into the lungs, as if it had completed a purification of the respiratory system.
I’m a little homesick, and my parents are not skilled in cell phone operation because I’m not around. I wasn’t able to be by their side, as if they were by my side when I was a kid. I am ashamed and regretful.
“Deeper Than the Sea”
@Li Xiansen
Last year, my classmates got married on November 1st. By July this year, they must go back on November this year. Currently in Beijing, my hometown of Hebei, after 20 years of graduation, I have not returned home for the New Year because of the epidemic for 2 years. After thinking about it, is it really because of the epidemic? It is more likely that there are fewer constraints and fetters, and that they do not want to go back for the so-called freedom. Now, because of the epidemic, I understand more about the meaning of home , so I am ready to return when the time is right.
@xiao
How long? I even burst into tears the moment I saw this question. Sky-high air tickets and hotels, coupled with limited annual leave and money, make people afraid to go home. The last time I left the house was in March 2019, and I haven’t been back since. “I hope I can come back this Mid-Autumn Festival”, “New Year’s Day”, “Spring Festival”, “Next year’s Mid-Autumn Festival”, and so on… I can’t list everything I miss, just because there is home, relatives are there, childhood is there, hometown , is also the hometown. The time when I miss home the most is when I know that a mother who is locked at home is facing a shortage of vegetables and has no way to ask for help, and when her application for PR is rejected, she knows that it is difficult to stay and it is even more difficult to go back.
@Calla
On March 21st and 22nd, two elderly neighbors in the community passed away one after another. On March 23rd, the hearse pulled the two deceased away. The family members knelt inside the gate of the community and watched the hearse leave. They were extremely restrained, but it exploded in my heart. A huge wave: an epidemic has actually made us, a nation that keeps preaching human filial piety, face the reality of life and death in this way.
The neighbor’s mother died in his hometown of Chongming at the end of March, and he was in Pudong. Because of the epidemic prevention and control, I couldn’t go home for the funeral. I saw him, a big man, sitting in the garden of the community, absent-minded, if something was wrong. A mandarin duck pot is isolated, and it is actually separated by yin and yang.
Movie “Deeper Than the Sea”
@ Sugar Xiaoxi
I haven’t been home for three years. The last time I went back to work in Hong Kong from my home in Northeast China was in June 2019. I always thought it was okay, and I could make phone calls and videos on weekdays. Until last week, my mother bought me a pair of trousers and said she wanted to send them to me. I laughed and said that the shipping cost was enough for several pairs of trousers, which was not worth it. My mother also smiled and said, ” That’s right, then I put the power bank and clothes I bought for you last year and put them together until you come back to wear them .”
I cried for a long time that day.
@.
I haven’t been home for Chinese New Year for four years. But I go home for about a week every year, and three of them are not holidays due to work reasons. It just so happens that I don’t want to grab tickets at the peak of the flow, get crowded in the car, and visit relatives in my hometown. It’s annoying to think about it.
Later, because of the epidemic, it was advocated not to go out unless it was necessary, and there were even more excuses for not going home during the Chinese New Year. Later, I changed to a normal nine-to-six weekend and holiday work. The last time I went home was the National Day last year, and I didn’t return for the Spring Festival. It has been nine months since then.
Of course, the ones I miss most are my parents, followed by a pile of unfinished books at home, an electric piano, and the previous company’s accommodation, which I can barely put down. After changing jobs last year, the newly rented house was too small to put too many things, so I had to send them all back. Last time I opened it at home for National Day, some books were covered with ashes, and the piano body was a little moldy. My hometown is in the humid southern countryside.
In the past year, I have wanted to go home from time to time. Due to the epidemic, many places I used to go to have been closed, and many activities could not be held. And because I became lazy, I usually don’t want to go out for a walk. I feel the enthusiasm in Beijing. My curiosity and curiosity gradually began to fade away, and I would torture myself from time to time whether to stay or go home, but thinking about going home is really not a spiritual life to speak of, so I still insist on it.
Occasionally, I can’t sleep late at night, standing on the windowsill watching the lights of thousands of houses, knowing that I will most likely miss home when I can’t stand here for the rest of my life.
The movie “Four Springs”
@eave v.
After the Spring Festival, I didn’t go home once. I always thought that I would take a leave of absence next week and go back after thinking about the epidemic. But things happened one after another, and the epidemics came in waves, and I couldn’t help sighing when I thought about it. It was obviously just a few hours’ drive away.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night for no reason, cry when I wake up, whimper and cry in a daze, Mom, I miss you, I want to go home, I can’t remember how many times. I really want to be able to rush home all the time when I get hurt, I really want to show my new hairstyle to my parents, I really want to watch the sunset in front of my house, I want to know what my mother has added to the vegetable field this year, I want to Going to the river to blow the wind is the wind that only belongs to summer.
I said this week that I will go back next week, and I really hope to go back.
@白(bǎi)
More than a year. Over the past year, the family’s old house was sold. Only the mother in the family handles all the problems before and after. I can’t help anything in Shanghai. Miss everything at home.
The movie “Four Springs”
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