Home is where
the heart is, really

I have finally discovered "home."

I used to think that home was a particular place, a physical entity, a black dot on the map. Last month, while attending a get-together in Boston with other Hawaii transplants, I discovered that home for me is not where, but what. Home is loved ones, family and friends. Home is the heart and soul. Home is emotion.

About 150 to 200 "Hawaiians," (primarily students attending school on the East Coast), convened at Harvard University for a conference on the future of Hawaii and the state's place in America's future.

Initially I decided to make the trip because I wanted to talk a bit of East Coast dialect-mixed-with-pidgin, and to eat ono food. What I discovered instead in two short days was more valuable and mind-numbing than that.

I will be the first to admit that life on the East Coast is an experience radically different from that in Hawaii. The weather, food, culture and lifestyle are all matters with which to contend. No amount of glory or praise can prepare you for the fact that you will struggle to assimilate and to feel at home. Mom and Dad are not there to cook you miso soup when you're sick, much less to tell you when to go see the doctor. There are no mango, lichee, papaya or plumeria trees growing outside the window.

During the past two years, I have searched for physical reminders of Hawaii to calm the surging desire to belong. Vacations from school were always momentous because I got to go home to Hawaii. "Oooh, you're so lucky," all my friends said.

YES, I was lucky to go home to Hawaii, but somehow, whenever I got home I felt an emptiness. I was home but I still didn't belong. Something was missing. After the excitement and rush to see all the relatives and friends had ebbed, I still felt displaced. I was no longer a resident, but a visitor. Yet, upon returning to New Jersey I felt the same lack of security. I was an outsider to two different worlds. Where was "home"?

The Harvard gathering allowed me the opportunity to examine my confusion in solitude and in the company of other students from Hawaii. It is funny that I always thought that the answers to my struggles would arrive via conversation. Instead I found my answers by allowing myself freedom to feel certain emotions.

For 19 years I considered Hawaii my only home. There was no room for New Jersey. I felt so scared the instant that I became comfortable with things unique to Princeton and New Jersey. I was frightened that if I allowed myself the opportunity to feel a love for anywhere other than Hawaii, the relationship between Hawaii and home would be shattered. I did not want to believe that I could call anywhere else "home."

So where is home? That, I now realize, is the wrong question. Rather, the question should be, "what is home"? Home is the people with whom you laugh and cry, whether in Hawaii watching the sunset at Haleiwa, or in New Jersey sitting at the window ledge wondering when the snow will stop.

Home is the smile that comes to my face when I am eating mango after a hot summer day in the sun. Home is the churn of nervous butterflies in my stomach when I arrive at Newark Airport ready for a new semester.

Home is New Year's Eve with the Hawaiian-kine extended family. Home is Hanukkah and Ramadan with my classmates. Home is Hawaii. Home is New Jersey.

I am indeed lucky I live Hawaii, but I have come to realize that I am lucky I live New Jersey, too. It doesn't matter where I am at any given moment in my life. What matters is that I have emotion and experience that makes my heart flutter and beat a bit faster, emotion that allows me to call anywhere and everywhere "home."

---

Cara Nakamura is sophomore at Princeton
University and a '95 graduate of Punahou.

Rant & Rave is a Tuesday Star-Bulletin feature allowing those 12 to 22 to serve up fresh perspectives. Speak up by fax at 523-8509; by answering machine at 525-8666; snail mail at P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu 96802; or e-mail, features@starbulletin.com