For Me, “Home” Is Never Present—Only Ever in the Past

Last summer, I moved from Northern California to Minnesota upon finishing my PhD. I was shocked by just how green and lush things were when I arrived in Saint Paul. Tickled by the novelty of a storm, I didn’t even mind being woken up by lightning and thunder for multiple nights. Everyone told me to go to the State Fair, gushing about chocolate chip cookies sold by the pail.

Finally, I thought, away from smoke-filled skies and tech bros and traffic filled with vanity-plated Teslas. Stanford had felt like a country club I snuck into. Its ubiquitous palm trees were offensive in their association with paradise; the dramatic arcades—always filled with tourists—were both a cliché and an intimidation. My indignation over seven-dollar pour-overs (before tax and tip!) made me feel out of place. I lived under the protective bubble of subsidized student rent; it felt like mercy, being allowed to live in Palo Alto.

So I was surprised recently when I felt a pang of emotions upon seeing a photo of Stanford’s Main Quad. I could imagine where the photographer was standing with Green Library to their back. In the photo, students’ bodies are slender and shiny in the bright sun, the buildings a textured palette of terracotta and buff, the perfectly blue sky, outlined with palm trees of course, forming the familiar backdrop. That was home for six years, I thought. A strange reaction—I had never considered Palo Alto my home when I was there. I remembered a quote a friend texted: “One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind.”

As the temperature begins to drop in Minnesota and I close all four windows separating my house from the outside, I miss California like home, a retrospective home. Maybe home is a backward-looking feeling because, in the present, I’m no longer confronted with things that made me feel out of place. The past is colored by nostalgia, and I remember it through rose-colored glasses. Having left the imperfect daily realities, I can focus on the beautiful, broad outlines. I was there, really there, and memories generate that feeling of familiarity that approximates what coming home must feel like to others.

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Throughout high school and college, I disliked the small talk question asked at parties, networking events, and first dates: “Where are you from?” I would eventually learn about microaggression, but even at the surface level, I couldn’t figure out what people wanted to know. I’d often ask for clarification: Are you asking where I was born? Where I went to elementary school? Where my parents are? Oh, they’d respond. I’d usually pick Maryland, where I had gone to middle and high school.

I’ve moved a lot throughout my life: three continents and ten cities, not including my current one. At some point, I printed dozens of photos that came with me from Baltimore to Atlanta to Oxford to Palo Alto. I learned quickly that painter’s tape is best against the wall; it doesn’t leave a trace. The photos could be posted and peeled off without damaging the spot or themselves. Visitors would marvel at my walls clad with photos, and I’d tell them the photos were my “portable home.” After studying them, one friend said, “You lived so many past lives.”

Wherever I went, I felt like an outsider. In Korea, people knew I wasn’t a local from the way I smiled widely and pronounced french fries in two syllables instead of six (프렌치 프라이). In Maryland, I was called a FOB because of the way my fingers immediately made the V sign for photos. In London, they were confused by my American accent and lingered over my passport. One British ticket agent commented, “Ah, a blue passport! My favorite.” While in line for immigration, I saw that the Korean passport is green, and the Japanese and Chinese passports red. Airport security was nicer to me once they saw my passport, so I started carrying it conspicuously, the golden eagle a charm to ward off harsh “random” interrogations.

After years of asking in vain where home is, I learned that the feeling I was craving—of belonging, of familiarity, of being from a place—could be generated by other means. Instead of seeking the feeling of arriving or being at home, I indulged myself in the feeling of having been home. Home was where I was before this new place, a retrospective comfort. Though no place is home upon arrival, I make it my home by the time I leave. I do this by collecting locations imbued with sentiment: the imposing reading rooms that inspired me despite their uncomfortable, squeaky chairs; the building on campus I would circle in hopes of running into a crush; the walk from Astor College to the Thames through Chinatown; Lake Lagunita at dusk.

Home is only ever in the past, the feeling of having made a place mine.

I’d tell them the photos were my “portable home.” After studying them, one friend said, “You lived so many past lives.”

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Sometimes I wonder if I know the difference between nostalgia and home, if there even is a difference. In Squid Game, the protagonist takes his daughter to a pojangmacha, a tent that sells street food. You see dishes wrapped in plastic, rows of deep-fried sweet potato and seaweed spring rolls, a small tub of spicy rice cake ladled out in thousand-won increments. Whenever I see pojangmacha on the screen, I’m filled with that warm glow of recognition and belonging.

That’s where I’m from, I think to myself, and my mind goes to my childhood in Taebaek, a poor ex-mining town in Korea’s eastern mountain range.

We had to walk to school—not an easy trek for a ten-year-old when snow is knee-deep in April. On a particularly cold day, midway through my walk back home, my feet were starting to hurt from the cold, so I sought shelter in a pojangmacha. A long skewer of boiled fish cake cost two hundred won, and it came with a paper cup of broth. I slowly ate the squiggly fish cake, careful not to stab my mouth with the skewer. I blew into the cup so I wouldn’t burn my tongue on the broth. Sensation returned to my face.

They say the cold is worse on an empty stomach, I said to the owner lady, careful to be polite and attach the -yo at the end of the sentence. She laughed, said I sounded like an old woman, and refilled my cup with broth.

Again, it’s weird to see pojangmacha and think, Home. While in Taebaek, I nagged my parents to send me back to the States every night as the 9:00 p.m. news fanfare would begin. American kids’ hallway lockers looked so cool in movies, and I was jealous that they had soccer practice after school when my own teachers discouraged me from extracurricular activities. Smart kids were to read more books, not waste time on sports. I couldn’t wait to leave Korea, but now, pojangmacha feels like home.

How is it that I rarely feel I’m at home anywhere, but I have so many places that have been home? The academic philosopher in me wants to create a puzzle out of this. I teach my students about the metaphysics of time, asking whether the past and the future are just as real as the present. Does the past exist? If my home is always in the past, does that mean I do have a home, just one that is always out of reach?

But then again, maybe I don’t care to concoct a puzzle, let alone solve one. A home wrapped in nostalgia feels so good, even if it means missing the mile-long Palm Drive leading up to Stanford’s Main Quad: the road a red carpet, the mosaics of the chapel glimmering gold, the orderly palm trees now forgiven.

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