Home and Away | 24.3

2001

Digital only; out of stock in print.

There’s something elusive about the notion of home, the way it can evoke such a range of definitions, often mired in emotion and memory, and can come in so many shapes and sizes—a house, a country, a makeshift bed or a neighbourhood filled with familiar faces. Home can simply be the smell of freshly cut grass or the sway of laundry drying in the breeze. To some it’s the well-known taste of mashed potatoes or the inescapable boredom of long summers. To others it’s a feeling in the pit of the stomach, a security blanket or, contrarily. a dark lurking secret they dare not tell. Thoughts of home can elicit longings for escape and independence or the desire to burrow safely away in familiar territory.

Yet as it evades definition in all its variety, and although it may differ in beauty, comfort or temperament, home is inevitably a place, a feeling or a memory we all carry with us throughout our lives. Sometimes it’s not until we go away that we realize just how we feel about home.

And as we go away, we are faced with another set of definitions and emotions—contradictory feelings of exploration and isolation, independence and solitude, adventure and fear. To move away from home is to explore all that is unfamiliar, all that is different from what we know. It is a journey we undertake as we discover ourselves and create our own sense of home.

The concepts of home and away are explored by many of the contributors in this issue of Room of One’s Own. Wenying Xu details the conflicting emotions of a Chinese immigrant in Philadelphia who endeavours to regain her footing after a nasty divorce. Jiajing (known as Jenny to her American friends) struggles with her double identity—her distaste for the “village food” her mother eats, her telling dreams in Chinese, her rejection of religion. As she tries to make her way in America, she learns to come to terms with the roots she has left in her home land. Similarly, in “Dreams of Orange Trees.” Dorothy Trail Spiller’s protagonist is torn after an invitation to migrate south to California. The recent loss of her husband in a tragic boating accident leaves her trying to maintain a safety net for her family in Prince Rupert. BC. Nonetheless, the prospect of a warmer climate and sunnier outlook is tempting . . . a plight no doubt faced by many Canadians.

To read Frances Leviston’s “Dover Road. Pasir Panjang,” or Tanya Evanson’s ‘Skin of the Road” is to feel the very distance between home and away—the hearth and the hills, the old and the new. the weight of memory and the freedom of escape. Anne Hills continues that theme in “Jamie.” in which women around the world wake up to a unison of daily rituals that bond them together despite global distance and diversity. Then Tracey Lindberg brings us back toward home in “Love that Red,” where residents in a small Saskatchewan town must deal with local problems.