Late Autumn and Homesickness

The Question at the Door

Most people believe that home is one place, a single house on a single street. They also believe that anyone who has never left it must know exactly what the word means.

The innkeeper had believed this as well, until the traveler asked him what home could mean to a man who had never left. He discovered that the answer would not come out in one piece. On this evening of late autumn, with the last leaves blown into the corners of the yard and the lantern already burning by the door, he began to give it to her a little at a time.

"I always thought home was simply this house," he said, setting two cups of hot cider on the bench. "But every guest who has slept under this roof has told me about some other place they call home, and most of them seem to have more than one."

"That is what my notebook says as well," said the traveler, pulling her coat closer against the cold that rose from the fields after dark. "The sayings about home that I have gathered never agree on where home is, only on how much it matters."

That is the mistake hidden in the common belief. The proverbs of many regions rarely tell you where your home must be. They tell you what home does for you: it warms you, it waits for you, and it lets you put down your bag and rest. They also say, again and again, that home can be found a second time, sometimes in a place you never expected to love. Under the lantern that evening, the two of them laid these sayings side by side, and the picture that came out of them was much larger than one house.

One Hearth, Many Tongues

The traveler began with the plainest saying she knew, one she had heard from sailors and grandmothers alike. In English, "East or west, home is best", "wherever you wander, nothing is better than home". It sounds simple, but it carries a whole journey inside it. You must first go east and west before you can say it with any weight.

In Dutch the saying is almost the same, "Oost west, thuis best", "east, west, home is best". In Polish it becomes "Wszędzie dobrze, ale w domu najlepiej", "everywhere is good, but at home it is best". The traveler liked the Polish form most of the three, because it is kind to the road and admits that everywhere is good before it gives home the prize.

"There is a Russian one that a carter told me years ago at this very bench," said the innkeeper. "I have always liked it because it does not insult the people who take you in."

In Russian, "V gostyakh khorosho, a doma luchshe", "it is good to be a guest, but it is better to be at home". The saying thanks the host first and still lets the heart turn toward its own door.

Picture yourself at the end of a long stay with a family in the hills, while the mother of the house wraps bread and cheese in a cloth for your journey. "You could stay another week, you know, because there is always room at this table," she says.

"It is good to be a guest, but it is better to be at home, and you have made leaving harder than I expected," you answer.

She laughs at that and quietly puts an extra loaf into the cloth before she ties it.

Gold of One's Own Hearth

The innkeeper looked at the lantern for a while before he spoke again, because the hearth was the part of the word he knew best. In German, "Eigener Herd ist Goldes wert", "your own hearth is worth gold". The saying is not really about money. A hearth in an old farmhouse was only a few stones and a fire, but it was a fire that nobody could send you away from, and that is what the gold in the saying means. People still say it when they finally move into a flat of their own, however small, and cook their first meal on a stove that belongs to nobody else.

In Irish there is a saying that people still use when they come back from a long trip and sit down by their own fire. "Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin", "there is no hearth like your own hearth". Other fires may be bigger and other kitchens grander, but only one fire knows how you like to sit.

Imagine you have spent three weeks sleeping in hostels and on night buses, and you arrive at your aunt's farmhouse just as the first frost whitens the fields. "Come in out of the cold, because I have kept your old chair by the stove," she says.

"There is no hearth like your own hearth, and I did not know how much I had missed this chair," you tell her.

The Italian saying that the traveler added made the innkeeper smile, because it praises the smallest of homes. In Italian, "Casa mia, casa mia, per piccina che tu sia, tu mi sembri una badia", "my home, my home, however small you are, you seem to me an abbey". An abbey was the largest and richest house that most people ever saw. The saying lets a single room grow to that size in the eyes of the one who lives there.

Nests of Straw and Gold

Birds came next, because the swallows had left the eaves of the inn only a few weeks before. In French, "À chaque oiseau son nid est beau", "to every bird its own nest is beautiful". Nobody else needs to admire your nest, since it is enough that it looks right to you.

The traveler had heard a Chinese saying with the same kind of nest in it, though it sounds a little more stubborn. In Chinese, "Jīn wō yín wō, bùrú zìjǐ de cǎo wō", "a nest of gold or a nest of silver is not as good as your own nest of straw". People say it with a shrug and a grin. Often they are coming home from a fine hotel or a rich relative's house to a plain flat with a lumpy bed.

Suppose you are back from a trip where friends lent you a beautiful apartment with marble floors, and your neighbor sees you dragging your case up the old stairs. "Was it not hard to leave all that luxury and come back to our narrow building?" he asks with a wink.

"A nest of gold or silver is not as good as your own nest of straw, and the first thing I did was fall asleep on my own lumpy bed," you answer.

Leaves Returning to Roots

Late autumn has its own saying about home, and the traveler read it from the oldest page of her notebook. In Chinese, "Luò yè guī gēn", "fallen leaves return to their roots". It is used for people who spend their working lives far away and come back in old age to the place where they began. There is no shame in it, only a quiet sense that a circle has closed.

The innkeeper said that a sailor had once taught him a Swahili saying with the same circle in it, taken from the old wooden ships of the eastern coast. In Swahili, "Mwenda tezi na omo, marejeo ni ngamani", "whoever goes to the stern and the bow comes back to the hold". You may move about the deck all day, but in the end you return to the place where the ship keeps you safe.

In Japanese there is a saying for the hope that sits behind many long journeys. "Kokyō e nishiki o kazaru", "to adorn your hometown with brocade". It means to come home having done well, dressed in fine cloth, so that the people who saw you leave can be proud of you. The traveler had also heard it used gently, for anyone who comes home with a good story to tell.

Imagine you are on the last train home after two years of working abroad, and the woman beside you notices the parcels tied to your case. "Are you going home for good, or only for the holidays, because you seem to be carrying half a shop?" she asks.

"I am going home for good, and I wanted to adorn my hometown with brocade, but I think my mother only wants to see my face," you answer.

The Place That Feeds You

Not every saying puts home where you were born, and this was the part of the evening the traveler had been waiting for. In Turkish, "Doğduğun yer değil, doyduğun yer", "not the place where you were born, but the place where you are fed". The word for fed also means satisfied. So the saying speaks of the place where your hunger of every kind is finally met.

"That one would have frightened my grandfather, who thought a man who moved away had lost his roots," said the innkeeper. "But I think he would have softened if he had heard the Japanese one beside it."

In Japanese, "Sumeba miyako", "once you live there, it becomes the capital". Any place, however poor or remote it seems at first, can become as dear to you as the grandest city once you have lived in it for a while. People say it to cheer a friend who has moved somewhere unwanted. They say it again later, with a laugh, when the same friend refuses to leave.

In Korean the same idea is said through affection. "Jeong deulmyeon gohyang", "where affection grows, there is your hometown". The word jeong means the slow warmth that builds between people and places over shared meals and ordinary days. The saying promises that this warmth can make a home of almost anywhere.

Picture yourself in your second winter of teaching in a mountain town where you knew nobody at first. The woman who runs the noodle shop hands you a bowl without asking what you want. "Last year you complained about the snow every single day, and now you walk in here as if you were born on this street," she says.

"Once you live there, it becomes the capital, and where affection grows, there is your hometown, so I suppose this street has decided to keep me," you answer.

The Chicken at Home

Belonging has a quieter side, and the innkeeper knew it well from his own years at the crossroads. In Hindi, "Ghar ki murgi daal barabar", "the chicken at home is worth no more than lentils". Whatever you have every day at home begins to look ordinary, even when it is the very dish a guest would travel far to taste.

"That is the danger of never leaving," he said. "I walk past these hills every morning without seeing them, and then a guest stands at the gate and cannot stop looking at them."

"And that is the danger of always leaving," said the traveler, "because I see every hill on the road and forget to write to the people who are waiting for me."

Imagine you bring a friend from the road to your parents' house, and she calls your father's plain chicken curry the best meal of her whole journey. "We eat this every Sunday and never think about it," your brother says, a little puzzled.

"The chicken at home is worth no more than lentils, until a guest from far away sits down and tastes it," you tell him.

The Doctor's New Word

The traveler told one short story that evening that was not a proverb at all, and the innkeeper asked her to tell it twice. In the 1680s a young medical student, writing in Latin, made up a new word for an illness he had seen in soldiers from the mountain valleys who served far from home. They lost their appetite, they could not sleep, and they grew weak for no reason that any doctor could find. He joined two Greek words, nostos, a homecoming, and algos, pain, and called the illness nostalgia, the pain of wanting to go home. For more than a century afterwards, doctors treated homesickness as a real disease. Some armies are even said to have forbidden soldiers to sing the songs of their own valleys, in case the music made them ill. Only much later did the word soften into the gentle feeling we mean by it now, when we look at an old photograph. The German-speaking soldiers had their own word for it all along, Heimweh, a home-ache, and it is still in daily use.

Counting Your Hearths

Before the cold drove them indoors, the innkeeper asked the traveler to count, and she offered you the same small exercise. Take a page of your notebook, or the back of a train ticket, and write down every place that has ever felt like home to you, even for a single week. It might be a grandmother's kitchen, a student room, a guesthouse where the owner learned your name, or a bench where you waited for someone. Beside each one, write what made it home for you. It might have been a person, a smell, a window, or simply the fact that you were fed there. Most people who try it find that their list is longer than they expected, and that the reasons on the right side of the page repeat themselves.

The traveler's list filled two pages of her notebook. The innkeeper's list had only one line, the inn, but beside it he wrote eleven different reasons, and the last of them was the lantern.

The Lantern Facing the Road

"So you see, a man who never leaves still has to find his home again every day," he said at last. "The house is only stones, and the home is what happens inside them when the fire is lit and someone comes up the road."

The traveler looked at the lantern on its iron hook by the door. For the first time she noticed that its glass was clear on the side toward the road and darkened with old smoke on the side toward the house. She asked him why it had been hung that way, and whether it was meant to guide the family home or to call in strangers who had nowhere else to sleep.

"Ask me again when the first snow comes," said the innkeeper, turning the wick up a little against the wind, "and I will tell you why my grandmother hung it so that it shines toward the road."