Home Again, in Tokyo This Time

Home is a fluid concept for my family.

Story time at "home" in a hotel

In one sense, it’s where we rest our heads: On home leave or vacation, when Luca says, “I wanna go home!” he means the hotel, or the VRBO house, or his grandparents’ place.

Even at 4, he clings to the stability of somewhere to feel settled. He picked apart my in-laws’ house and my parents’ house, describing exactly what he liked and didn’t. “I like black toilets,” he told me. And another time: “I like the shape of this house, but not the rooms.”

Luca on a plane

When I was 7, my parents moved us from a little house in a tight neighborhood to a country house with lots of space to explore and a mini orchard where we could climb trees and eat fresh ripe fruit straight from the branches. But as a child, I was devastated at the idea. I couldn’t imagine life a whopping 25-minute drive from our friends and without our back deck, where my sister and I used to make treats with her little Snoopy Snow Cone machine. That moving day, even though my parents bought us donuts from Mr. T’s (mine was chocolate with chocolate frosting and rainbow sprinkles), I had a huge lump in my throat. I was leaving my home.

But I also knew exactly where I was going. We’d watched for months as my dad and his contractor friend oversaw and participated in the building of our future home, erecting walls and hammering nails. We’d commuted to school out in the country so we wouldn’t have to switch halfway through.

I remember one night several months after we moved, I walked out to the barbecue with my dad to “help” flip the meat, and a gorgeous evening sky greeted us: orange, pink, purple. I held my dad’s hand and looked up at him as we walked. “I like it here,” I told him. “Thank you for moving us here.”

As Joe and I move our children around the world, I can’t help but wonder how they feel to say goodbye to who and what they know in favor of a house and nation and people they do not know. I can certainly guess by the way behavior deteriorates after movers box up our things and transform our personalized home to a house we'll soon leave. Or by the way Luca has a sudden uptick in potty accidents.

Fun with the Kim side

And the truth is, it’s strange for me, too. When I move now, I move to places I’ve never been. Houses I haven’t seen.

We left Hong Kong in early July and jam packed six weeks with friends, family and fun on both coasts of the United States. As wonderful and amazing and vital as it was, it was also difficult. Of course traveling with small children is not relaxing, but there was something more, a nagging sense of homelessness. No grounding.

Peach picking with Halmonee

We let one home go with only a vague sense of the next home to cling to. We saw snapshots, but we had no idea how it would feel to be there, or how it would smell.

We felt untethered.

And that’s draining, yes, but in a way, for me, this was also a gift. While Luca saw the potential for “home” in each house we stayed, picking out things he liked and didn’t, I was taking the temperature of each place we stopped, too, projecting for a moment a glimmer of home. In DC, I batted around ideas of where I’d hang out and grocery shop, of who I’d see regularly, of which neighborhood we’d try to live in, which type of house. Rent or buy?

Pruning flowers with Nana

In Long Island, I noted all the fun activities available for children and the cute seaside towns where I could see making a cozy life (though Joe would have to get used to beach house style décor).

In Oakdale, I imagined watching my niece and nephew’s basketball and soccer games regularly and being part of all family holidays or random weekend gatherings. Of leaving the boys with my parents for a weekend to have an adventure with Joe.

In Sacramento, I spent a morning wandering around Capitol Park, one of my favorite activities when I lived in that city some years back. Across the street, I saw a church garden I’d found once before, with a little sign to welcome any who passed. I went in and the scene came back to me as through a memory—the little fountain trickling water and muffling the clamor of traffic outside, and the perfectly arched shade trees filtering the warm morning sunlight. I sat and wondered what kind of little respites I’d call my own in Tokyo, which coffee shops or park benches I’d frequent. Which activities and people would influence my children’s hobbies and loves.

Mountain trip with the Brewers

There was something encouraging about this virtual home shopping; it felt like a traveling mercy in our time of transition. In each place, I formed loose attachments and strategies for settling, but then I let them go to move on to the next stop on our itinerary. It formed for me a love for each place that was not possessive: An appreciation for having visited rather than a sadness to leave. An excitement for the possibility of what’s next. God’s gift to me, then, was an open idea of home, a readiness to settle in and make space for myself and my family to thrive together, and to welcome into our lives new life-long friends. To grow.

Walking in California

And the added bonus of our transience was that my boys, constantly together in a season of change, began to see each other as part of permanent "home." They transformed from baby and jealous toddler into brothers.

And Tokyo—what can I say? I was more than ready to love it here, but truly, it’s amazing. The things I picked out and loved about each place we visited over home leave are magnified here. I adore our home. I love our little segment of the housing compound complete with several fast friends, and I think the compound itself is fantastic. Beyond that, there is so much to love about Tokyo itself so far that I keep wondering if someone will pull back a curtain and say, “just kidding!” It can't be this good.

A lotus field we happened upon in Tokyo

I remember one Disneyland visit during college when I accompanied family friends who had young daughters. As we floated down the Small World river, the older little girl—about Luca’s current age—leaned up to her father and, emotion flushing her voice, said, “Daddy! It’s everything I dreamed it would be!!”

And I know we're still in the honeymoon phase with Tokyo, but I really feel that way.