Bloom Where You’re Planted

For those who are new here, I am from a small town near Lexington & Concord (from American history class) called Burlington. No, not in Vermont and not the Coat Factory. Burlington, MA. It is known these days as a technology hub–it’s the East coast HQ for Oracle, and it’s also known for a giant mall (featured famously in Paul Blart: Mall Cop) It is also the hometown of SNL and Parks & Recreation legend Amy Poehler

My family actually ended up in this suburb of Boston directly because of the Oracle connection. My father’s H1B visa job was a gig with an outfit of Tata’s called Tata Technologies (NOT Tata Consultancy Services). He had a director that lived out in the Midwest, but his major stakeholder was Oracle, and he needed to stay close to his client. My father started his Work-From-Home journey soon after, creating an home office, and then working from couch from when I was 7 onward.

After a year in the “immigrant” apartments on the more cold, industrial side of town, we made the move upward and outward, to the land of colonials and ranches. Family houses that have been in the neighborhood for generations. This light blue ranch rambler dwells forever in my memory as tall as it stood when I was 6 years old, walking up to that front door with my mom, in awe of the dappled sunlight streaming in the windows.

Over the years, the house grew creekier, carrying all the memories through our mementos, our daily grocery lists, our toys, books, the stuff accumulating as we settled into our identities as Americans.

In 2001, coinciding with 9/11, we happened to receive our Permanent Resident cards, more commonly known as “green” cards. However, we already had this status in Singapore. In a way, my 9-year-old brain took it like collecting Pokemon cards. Gotta catch ’em all. The permanence, ironically, was lost on me. It wasn’t the big deal that other Indian immigrants made it feel like– at least, not to me.

Home was where we were at the time– belonging to places and traveling to new ones constantly was the norm. As the years marched on, the house grew older as we did. A maple tree torn down to make room for a butterfly garden. The in-ground pool filled in with dirt to make space for a walled vegetable garden.I had a magical childhood in that house, and a much needed respite from my accelerated adulthood, too.

The past few years, pre-Covid, I spent 6 months of the year in the house all alone. Without the symphony of family, my bond to the house was cemented and consecrated. The house was built in the early 60s, I believe. The basement was my cave, not unlike Plato’s. I would write at the family desktop and dance on the tile floor, put in for my use. My designated places in the home were always freezing, but I would make them cozier, homier, warmer, metaphorically and physically.

And now, with this oncoming renovation in process, I know I want to go back when it’s ready for me to live in. I want to invest in it. Others my age are constantly refreshing Zillow, but I know I will be home. Someday.

Upending my conception of the word “home” into instead “roots” or the past, and looking to my current moment instead as “tender green sprouting branches” or the future–still searching for sunlight and tentatively navigating where they fall amidst other branches. Learning to share. Learning to be one of the many. Recently, trees themselves were found to have community and “mutual aid”. I think that finding analogies to place myself in time and space has been immensely helpful. As have been the friends and family that have always been there for me and have remained constant despite the tectonic shifts of my life these past few months. I am so grateful for them, and reminded that when things fall apart, good people fall together.
And, the best version of home is the warmth along a telephone wire.