I spent six emotional weeks visiting my first love. Although we don’t meet often, when we do I feel uncomfortable at how easily we still relate. There is no denying that with my first love I understand the language between us, the culture around us, and the spark which united us for so many years. Things aren’t complicated between me and my first love; everything is routine and familiar.
Familiarity. That’s the word which captures the confusing and conflicting feelings I have when I return to America – my first love.
Eleven years after leaving, I still love California’s rolling mountains, New York’s commanding skyscrapers and the Midwest’s endless forests. I will never stop being awed by Arizona’s breathtaking canyons.
But it’s not home.
I still love walking into a mall without having my bag checked, going to a concert without fear of a terror attack and driving for hours without a military check point.
I love sleeping in my childhood bed, fully understanding the language spoken around me, laughing at jokes which I ‘get’ without thinking, and being able to express myself comfortably in my mother tongue.
But it’s not home.
As a first love, I will never stop feeling a connection to, and appreciation for, America. But I have moved on.
My home is now a land which my forefathers walked thousands of years ago, witnessing miracles and wonders. It’s the land I prayed towards in my childhood, and sang about at summer camp. It is the Promised Land that my people yearned to return to through exile and suffering…
