Hiraeth

I was more ready to go back home, than to go home.

I sulked at the pillar at the other side of the terminal, waiting for the Flyaway Bus. As much as I did not really want to go back to home, with tasteless cement boxes for houses and food with more fluff than filling, at least I was no longer on seven hours of dehydration in a plane bouncing on air. Yet it felt like I had left a home at the same time.

LAX

I was not the only with the same sentiment.

The bus came. Luggage was stuffed in. My classmates shuffled awkwardly in behind me, sitting in the lower back of the bus. Finally, all that was left was getting to Mom, already driving to the Flyaway destination. Hopefully, with more water.

Waiting for the bus to start up again, I leaned my head against the window. People came and went. Stood and stared. Yelled and yelled at, walked silently with headphones on, ran to and fro, earning blares from car horns and shouts from traffic guards. Pickups and drop-offs squished their way through the ever-swarming crowds, just barely avoiding collisions. So many people, so many secret adventures, travels, plans, trips, destinations, journeys; yet most looked so glum.

Except for the dark-haired lanky boy, jumping around the trunk of a white SUV, waving a green tablet in one hand and hugging one of his two uncles with the other, his mother and father smiling wearily at their boy’s excitement.

I smiled, wondering. How long had this family been apart? Was this a return home, or a trip abroad? How long had it been since they all had last seen each other? But I am not sure if any of those questions mattered. Through exhaustion, legal documents, slow lines, bad food; in the midst of car exhaust, blaring horns, ruckus and traffic—there it was: a bloom of reunion. Warmth, happiness, nostalgia, and peace, like the sunset lighting the freeway bridge up ahead.

I wondered how my reunion would go. How excited would my family be to see me? Probably very, yet I could not bring myself to feel the same in return at the moment. What would Mom say? What would Rose do? Dad would be happy, I knew that, he was always easiest to predict: smiles and a hug, maybe two, and then back to everything being normal. Calm, tender, but sensible and not over-the-top, something I appreciated and wanted to mimic.

But I was sitting here, resentful and bitter, yet enjoying the sweetness of the other family. Was I hypocrite for not seeing my family who wanted me back so badly, or was I just missing my new home more, because I never knew what living and loving life meant till four weeks ago?

In perhaps reproachful longing and happy wishes for them, I watched the family shove themselves into a car with doors that wouldn’t open right. They drove off, away onto the swarming freeway, and, not ironically, into the sunset.

I hissed as my head bumped hard against the window as my first ride to home moved. Massaging my temple, I leaned back, smiling.

I should stop dreading, because maybe my reunion would be just as warm and happy as that boy’s was.