Homebound
Last week, after months of waiting, my dog finally arrived in Tokyo from America, where she’d been staying with my parents, delayed from entry by the stringent Japanese rabies-prevention procedures.
That morning, we headed out to Haneda, going through the terminal before ending up in the cargo area, a place it felt like we shouldn’t be, despite the visitor passes strung around our necks. I’d been anticipating a long, bureaucratic process, before finally a tearful reunion, but it wasn’t like that. Okay, it was bureaucratic (that’s Japan), but everyone was quite kind, and eventually, we reunited with our dog anticlimactically, caught by surprise, after stumbling across her crate strapped to a pallet in the merciful shade. Soon, she was home, asleep on her new dog bed, and within a day or two, she seemed to be fully back to normal.
What a wild life for this dog. Born on the streets of Arkansas, a place I’ve never been, sent up to Chicago, adopted there by us, before three years later being shipped to the other side of the world, making a detour in Europe, and landing in the biggest city in the world, reunited with her family. We keep joking, She doesn’t even know she’s in Tokyo.
But also, what a wild life for us. Yet paired with the twin thought about the fascinating turns life can take, about setting a goal and going out and achieving it, about finding adventure and more, once I was back in my apartment, sitting next to my fiancé and our dog on the couch after dinner, I felt my first twinge of homesickness.
It’s sort of a rare feeling for me. After I left to go to college, it took me until winter break to head back to my parent’s house, (despite growing up like 10 miles from my university). I think that says it all right there: it was my parent’s house. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy growing up there, didn’t have good memories or look back fondly on my childhood—but I didn’t want to go back. I liked living in Chicago, it’s a city I’m weirdly proud of, even now, even though I was clearly ready for a change.
But now, back on the couch with my partner, with my dog, I was transported back to the countless nights we’d spent the same way in Chicago. In fact, this was the same style IKEA sofa we’d bought when we moved into our last apartment. How things change, how things stay the same.
Nothing’s closed off, and it’s not like I never intend to return to America, but realistically, there are probably places, people, I’m not likely to see again. Despite rarely feeling “homesick,” I do feel a strong sentimentality linked with place. I can easily call to mind dozens of places I’ve been, not tied to any particular memory, but simply to the experience of having been there. There’s something lingering, something evocative about these mental images, like the landscape photography of Todd Hido, or the empty night photos from Greg Girard.
Of course, there’s something sad about the thought, though perhaps it’s a minor one. After all, “one door closes, another opens,” as they say. I probably won’t see the cul-de-sac street near the railroad tracks my friend lived on again, but I wouldn’t trade the expanse of Tokyo for it, either. So far, like my experience of learning Japanese, the more I’ve seen of Tokyo the more I want to see more. It’s an endless city, as big and dense as it is quiet and intimate. It’s cool in a way that nowhere else I’ve lived is. Walking around its corridors, at least once a day, I delight in the pleasure of being able to live here.
Mostly, I’m just happy my dog is here, our little family unit complete once again. Things are back in place; that felt like the final major barrier to living here. But it’s also a chance to look back.
