After my successful run in the Blogging 101 course, I decided to sign up for Photography 101. Today’s assignment: post a picture of “home.”
Home is elusive for me at the moment. If we define home as the place where you were born and/or grew up, I haven’t effectively lived there since 1999. I go back around once a year, and I still call it “home” in casual conversation sometimes, but it hasn’t really been my home for a long time. If we define home as the place where you currently live, Kuala Lumpur certainly doesn’t feel like home. We will only be here for one year, so it only qualifies as home by a technicality. We will go back to the Dallas area, likely to the same suburb, when we return, but it’s difficult for me to picture that as home, too. We only lived there for a year before heading to KL, so we rented. We gave up the lease at the end of the lease term, so we will need to find a new place to live when we return. It won’t be difficult to do that, but it’s not like we have a place to live with our belongings ready and waiting for us to walk in the door. It’s hard to call a house you have never lived in home, too.
Home. I grew up on the ocean. (Quite literally. High tide came up in my backyard.) I feel at home when I am near the water. I’d rather have a large body of water, preferably salt water, but any water will do. After college, I can remember two distinct moments when I realized “OK, I can live here” after I moved to a new city, and both occurred near water. I had a similar moment here in KL about a month ago- also near water. (Actually, now that I think about it, all three moments also had a hike and bike trail in common. Interesting.) I’m happy living here, but I’m always aware of being an outsider and that can take a toll. While I was walking one morning, I found this pond and the statues. Immediately I felt at peace.
I find myself drawn to water- a pond, a river, a lake, it doesn’t matter. Finding a pond in a park close to my apartment made me feel more at home in KL.
When I discovered the pond in the middle of a small park near our hotel, I was very happy. The whale and dolphin statues are a really nice bonus. I refer to them as the Secret Whale and the Surprise Dolphins, because they are hidden. You have to be in the park to find them, you can’t see them from the mall area outside the park. The grocery store where I frequently shop and one of the coffee shops where I frequently work are in the mall at the base of the towers. I can see the park from the coffee shop, but not the pond or statues. It makes me happy to know that they are there.
adventure pengembara 