Home And My People

Being new to Houston, I was amused to find out there is a “Houston, we have a problem” festival! Hmm… somebody has a sense of humor. Good omen 🙂

I hit my new city last Friday. Yes, I missed the floods. No, I did not miss the heat and the humidity and from what everyone tells me, “I ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

But really, how much can the weather influence any of our decisions? (OK, I know – it can and it does, but I am being positively upbeat here). So, Houston, here I am – yet another city in my book of cities I’ve lived in.

Newness does not bother me. I have lived in many continents and countries, and I wear a watch that shows multiple time zones. I’m really good at calculating time differences as my mother and so many of my friends live thousands of miles away, and I usually start getting birthday wishes several hours before my birthday, from friends farther east than me.

I am a TCK a.k.a Third Culture Kid. Over the years, I have learned to adjust and adapt and enjoy the ride of the bumpy transition to the “foreigness,” the new, the unknown. For me, the move is simply a boost to my thirst for exploring new things. Yes, there is uncertainty and anxiety and a certain dose of adrenaline for conquering yet another milestone on my internal mapping.

Plenty of difficulties from making sure the phone has enough battery or you can plug it into a car charger as you drive everywhere with Google Maps; your anchor safe zones need to be reinvented so you can feel safe in certain routines which will take some time to fall back into the normalcy of the daily schedule; your best friend is sleeping when you wake up and vice versa so you have to wait to share whatever news…

It’s not easy but having my son and his family here and especially the new guy in my life – my six month old grandson – makes it worth trying.

I miss my other home. I miss all the people I love – my people – who are not close by. I miss the blue Aegean waters, the sunsets, the views and hundreds of little and bigger things. And then, I also cherish these things I find here which are not over there, on the other side, the other home on the other side of the Atlantic and my other set of homies on the West Coast where my daughter now is.

But over the years, I’ve learned that home is not a place, only where the people you love, are. And I am so grateful to have my people … anywhere they are.