Moving Home

Finally moved back home again.

When I first moved to campus in 2003, I took all my photo albums, mini-stuff animals and CD collections to school. As time goes on, I found out I can live perfectly fine without looking at my prom pictures everyday. In the course of 3 years and after several move-ins and move-outs, I have thrown away a lot of things and moved most of my childhood and teenage memorabilia home. I have also accumulated new books, pictures and wardrobe. When I got home, I had so much to unpack that I had to move some of the things in my room down to the basement. I replenished my shelf: “Romeo and Juliet” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” are replaced by “The Dream of Scipio” and “The Da Vinci Code”. My high school yearbook was traded for the scrapbook from the Miami spring break. My entire “Seventeen” collection had to make way for “Cosmopolitan” and “Vogue”. I looked at my drawer and complained to my mother that its rainbow color is too childish and not fitting for an adult. She rebuffed, “you were kicking and crying for me to buy it before”.

I find my self not used to certain things at home, despite all the love I have for my parents and our home. I got burnt washing my hand, so used to the slow-to-warm faucet at school and I forgot at home “hot” means “hot”. I forgot my parents go to sleep by 11pm and wake up 7am that I get yelled at for staying up until 2am. I am going to miss my dorm room, although while I was in the dorm I missed my house tremendously. I am going to miss playing loud music in the shower, eating ice cream for dinner and most of all staying out late.

When do we start calling “home” our “parents’ house”? Normally I guess people start when they have a family of their own. Is it “unfilial”, as Chinese people call it, to want to leave “home” and be independent?