What Makes a House a Home?
“Am I still grieving this time, this place, and this home that became mine, even though it was 5,000 miles away from family, friends, and any sense of normalcy?”
Guest article by by Kelly Buchtien Jackson
I sat on my couch, sipping coffee, looking at a photograph of our recent trip to Colorado displayed on our smart TV. The Indie folk I started listening to while living abroad was humming along in the background.
It had been a year and a half since we stepped back on American soil. I still remember the mugginess I felt as we walked off the plane and into the jetway. It was quite different from the crisp, fall, morning air that greeted us in 2018 when we landed in Munich, Germany.
Our time abroad was officially over and the heartache of leaving a place that quickly became home began to set in.
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When we first arrived in Germany, I did everything I could to make our little temporary flat a home. I knew, a little bit, about what to expect. I knew I would be in a new place, a new culture, and I wanted to safeguard as much as I could against the fears and anxiety that would inevitably arise for a 27-year-old who’s never lived more than three hours away from her mom.
So, I took up valuable luggage space to include a few picture frames, the Texas scent of a “Homesick” candle my girlfriend gave me anxiety meds, and a couple other mementos to remind me of home. This, I told myself, would make the transition easier.
However, what didn’t make it into my luggage is the true feeling of home. I wasn’t expecting the sorrow and struggle that followed me around our little flat—some days so severe I was unable to walk out the front door.
But as the months passed, life began to settle in. Medicine supported me in the physical manifestations of my anxiety, but my therapist, husband, newfound friends, and the slow-paced life of Germany began to soften the blow of not being home. Before I knew it, Germany became home and Texas, my hometown, slowly faded into the background.
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Two years came and went, and it was time to begin the process of repatriation. We met with our relocation assistant, made attempts to terminate our cell phone contract early (not an easy feat in Germany #iykyk), and divided our belongings into “ship” and “plane” piles.
I made my final trips to the coffee roastery, the tea shop, and our neighborhood grocery to gather a few of our favorites. Once again, we were taking up valuable luggage space for a few things to remind us of home.
But despite my best attempts, that true feeling of home still didn’t make it into my luggage.
I was moving back home, after all, so I didn’t expect the sadness, heartbreak, or struggle that accompanied me when I returned to a former place, a former culture, a former home.
The wheels touched down, the deplaning shuffle began, the Houston humidity engulfed me, and grief wrapped its arms around me for the next year and a half.
Everything you loved about living there is gone—this is home. The thought lingered in my head as I drove our rental car along the familiar roads back to my parent's home.
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We slipped back into hill country living, on the outside, with ease. Our house was still there, with most of the furniture intact, thanks to a sister and short-term renters who took care of our cookie-cutter home while we were gone. My white Ford Edge looked as great as ever, thanks to my mom who kept up with oil changes, tire rotations, and even replaced a windshield for me.
We had our church community, our friends, and our favorite dining spots. Even our aging dogs were still with us, despite my fears of them making it over to Germany with us, but not making it back home.
Every day back in our central Texas hometown was a reminder of all I lost when we got on that one-way plane back to the United States. Everything here is the same—yet everything, for me, is different—and I struggle to weave the same and the different together in a cohesive and fulfilling life. Living abroad changes you. It changed me in many ways, I think, for the better. I bike more. I advocate for sustainability options here. We imitate the Sunday Sabbath of German life. I do what I can to make our “new” home feel like our German home. It’s an unwritten script I’ve written for myself—“if I can make it feel like home, it will be home.”
So, I grind the beans, drink the tea, and eat the snacks. I play the music. I set the mood. I even search YouTube for a “live German city” to play throughout the day as I work from home.
But, it still doesn’t feel like home.
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Our shipping container arrived with our German furniture.
“It will finally feel like home,” I thought as I opened up boxes I’d long forgotten about. I displayed my photography from our time in Europe and decorated with the items picked up on our travels.
The home feeling I was searching for still didn’t come.
We decided it was time to make some changes in our life to reflect the change that had happened within us. We bought a new-to-us home. It was smaller than our previous home but the choice was intentional. It was near the city center, next to the park, and within biking distance of restaurants—all things that echoed our past life.
It has begun to feel a little homier, but I still can’t get over the sadness I feel at times.
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I talk to my therapist about grief.
“Am I still grieving this time, this place, and this home that became mine, even though it was 5,000 miles away from family, friends, and any sense of normalcy?”
“It’s very likely,” she says.
She flips through three years' worth of notes and lands on November 2018’s notes. She glances at me over her leather portfolio as she reads a few of the key phrases I spoke to her back then. We chuckle. They sound oddly familiar—just like the words I was speaking for this appointment about not fitting in, lack of confidence, and worrying over things that have yet to come to fruition.
I thought the process of coming home would be much easier than the process of leaving. A year and a half of evidence shows me that is not true. The process is slow, tiring, and even somewhat depressing. Nevertheless, this town that used to be mine is slowly becoming more like home again. It involves choosing, each day, to see the beauty of God’s creation here, even though it doesn’t feel like the beauty there.
Many days I feel a deep sense of loss. Some days, though, there are small moments when I see the early morning sun beating down across the leaves as they slowly turn from yellow to orange. They’ll likely never be the reds, oranges, and purples that narrated my walks in Germany.
But God’s beauty is here, too—and each day, I see it just a little bit more.
Kelly Buchtien Jackson is a former teacher turned online entrepreneur while living abroad with her husband and two pups. She currently resides back in her hometown in Central Texas where she navigates the process of repatriation through writing, photography, reading, gardening, organizing every nook and cranny in her house, and binging Netflix when she can. Since moving home, she and her husband grew their family through fostering and look forward to sharing the impact of life abroad with their growing family.
Follow Kelly on her blog and on Instagram.
Photo by Hans Isaacson on Unsplash