Homecoming

Being a nomad is a strange thing. Upon remarking that being back in Tartu during my spring break is a bit like coming home, a friend asked how long I was here (two years). After listening, he remarked that you have to live someplace three years to feel like it is home and at least four years to start making friends. Hmph, I thought. Perhaps that is a rather Estonian perspective. I have not lived anywhere for longer than two years since I was in college, and, amazingly enough, I still have friends. Does such a vagabond lifestyle lead me to have a blase attitude about the development of friendship? Are such ties built during a time abroad so shallow?

There is probably some truth to it. Long-term friendships do not always survive without a physical presence test. True friends are ones that you can pick up with even if you haven't exchanged hundreds of emails or followed Facebook status changes for years, but you do lose something of the everyday developments. I have had great luck lately with finding old friends -- those from my Peace Corps days who have surfaced in Washington, DC, a friend from my New York stint back in 1998-1999, a wonderful Outlaw Ranch friend and college classmate who is going to perform our wedding ceremony, even a high school connection long elapsed but renewed since moving back to the United States. I am not convinced that it really takes four years.



After all, I have been treated to such warm welcomes and wonderful treatment here in Tartu since coming on Saturday. Last night, I met nearly thirty former students in a local coffeehouse (yes, that does make me feel like a good teacher... just the boost I need before heading back to the trenches at home after the break).



It is senseless to deny that coming back to a place where you lived and worked for a couple of years is a bit like coming home. I know the streets and the faces milling around them, but I also have the eerie sense that it isn't my environment any more. Having the experience of revisiting my lovely Peace Corps site in Slovakia, my Mexican home in Guadalajara, my neighborhood in New York City, the town where I went to college in South Dakota, my digs in Romania, and my former home here in Estonia, I can say that it is wonderful to arrive in a place you know, especially places you have recently left. Over time, the ties become harder to maintain, but the personal and emotional memories linger on and on in the fabric of the buildings, streets, and even the weather.



In Tartu, and all of the places where I have planted myself for some time, I do feel a bit like a long-lost stranger coming home. And it feels good to be part of a place again, even as a guest, for just a little while. It's like recovering pieces of myself that I have left behind, holding them up to the light, remembering them, and putting them back in my pocket to take out again later. It's completely lovely!