Today while I sat in the very comfortable blue chairs that
sit in the prized location of our living room, I decided to put on some music.
This was despite my better judgement since I was working on reading a rather
dense book for one of my PhD classes starting in September and needed full
concentration capacity. Having recently acquired Spotify thanks to my bf, I
decided to peruse the vast database to find a new playlist to try. I found one
called #vainsuomihitit, or “only Finnish hits.” Feeling adventurous, I decided
to give it a whirl.
I had never heard any of the songs on the list and, when I listened
to them, I knew that they were not songs I would actively choose to listen to.
Yet, hearing the words—only a portion of which I could understand—made emotions
well up. They reminded me of Finland, where walking down the street I would
hear this beautiful language being spoken and see it written all around me.
A typical Aurajoki picture |
Now in a Finnish mindset, even looking into my parents’ back
yard made me think of the Finnish cottages I have spent so much of the summer
in. I imagined the river that is the subject of every cliched picture on my
Facebook wall from international students’ posts and felt a longing to walk
along it, while cyclists whizzed effortlessly past—the crowds are never so
dense as to make this difficult, this is Finland after all— and people sat on
the grassy hill along the river enjoying the last days of summer. I missed the
quick breeze that began to bite at dusk even in the midst of summer. I even
missed the feeling of darkness in winter that made you forget that it was only 3:30
in the afternoon.
I have been quite happy being settled at home for this past
month so this sudden longing for Turku surprised me. It is, perhaps a mark of
how as we grow older, new places begin to creep their way into our hearts and
become the place we consider home. We replace the steadiness of the place of
our childhood with the place (or places) that will be where we find stability
as adults. And our relationship with those places is quite different than the
place where we grew up. The latter is rooted in nostalgia while the former is
rooted in responsibility and the future.
My new Finnish bed sheet for NYC, thanks to the bf |
The idea of home has been on my mind recently because the
place I call home is about to change as I head to New York City to begin
working on my PhD program. New York City is not a place I particularly want to
live but it will be the place where I work for my future and where I will
continue to pave my own path.
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