Divya Kulkarni
February 12, 2024
Home: I’ve Left My Heart In Many Places
“Come here! She’s kicking,” my mom softly called me over to the couch. I excitedly ran over and sat next to her. Pressing my ear to her six month pregnant belly, I closed my eyes to concentrate. My mom guided my hand under hers, so I could feel my baby sister kick. I felt a small thump and gasped, looking up at my mother. We both smiled. Later that day we went into the city with my mom’s friend, Mayah. Mayah was half Filipino and her mother always made me cassava cake, little golden sweets made from cassava and coconut milk. Her special twist was adding pomegranate seeds to the custard filling for some tang. After sharing the cassava cake, we headed to the pottery class Mayah booked. My mom and I decided to make a little treasure chest for my baby sister. We painted the lid with deep greens and blues and wrote “for little sis” in scarlett letters on the inside. Before heading home, we walked along the fisherman’s wharf at Pier 39 in San Francisco Bay. The air smelled like the sea, salty but mixed with buttery popcorn and cotton candy from the nearby fair. At just five years old, I watched curiously as the sea lions bathed in sunlight on the dock. I was sad when it was time to go, but my mom promised we’d come back another day. I didn’t know at the time, but I wouldn’t walk along the pier again for another 12 years.
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“I think it’s that one,” I pointed to the apartment under us with bikes and scooters littered on the grass. I was walking with my mom, telling her that the girl I played with at school rode the same bus home with me, so she had to live near us somewhere. I was seven years old, and it was my first time experiencing a Pennsylvania fall. The chilly air carried whiffs of firewood. The red and golden leaves crunched under our feet while the sun set in the distance. As we passed by their balcony, a young woman stepped outside. She called us in for tea, she’d been meaning to introduce herself to the new neighbors. Walking into the little apartment I saw an explosion of toys and books, the rice cooker steaming on the kitchen counter, shrimp curry boiling on the stove. Shreya’s mom handed me a plastic cup with strawberry milk and introduced me to her daughter. I sat next to Shreya on the couch and we started talking about school while her little brother watched Spongebob on the TV. Over the school year, we spent many evenings and weekends racing our bikes down the big driveway that lined a grassy hill outside our apartments. We spent humid summers playing mermaids in the pool while our moms sipped lemonade and read their grown up mystery books. When it was time to go back inside, Vasanthi Aunty warmed up chicken curry and parathas, and we ate dinner with strawberry milk lined lips and monkey bar callused fingers.
I moved to King of Prussia, Pennsylvania when I was eleven years old. Weird name, I thought. It was named after King Frederick the Great of Prussia and first settled by Quakers. The roads carry the history of the Revolutionary War, being named after famous generals in Valley Forge. The National Park Service of the United States goes into detail about George Washington’s Continental Army and their winter encampment, but to me, Valley Forge is a historic national park 10 minutes from my house. Unlike the log cabins and primitive brick houses in the park, my house was painted white, with a dark red roof and blue shutters. The sidewalk out front wrapped around the driveway to the main door, lined with petunias and shrubbery. I helped my parents pick out art, rugs, and furniture and helped my dad hang up family pictures in the dining room. It was the first time my sister and I got our own rooms, so I picked out all white furniture to complement my sky blue walls and a rainbow chair for a pop of color.
Behind my house is a trail guarded by a black fence. Behind the trail are train tracks that run through an evergreen forest. Behind the train tracks is the Schuylkill River. Behind the river is the town I used to live in. The town I used to live in held memories of my sweet childhood, but I was starting middle school in King of Prussia. It was time to start growing up and thinking about what I wanted to be. It was time to start making friends and getting involved with school.
I met my best friends Gwen and Eliza in summer camp before sixth grade. During the school year, we played club basketball together. But it wasn’t until the day I walked into the field hockey information session in seventh grade and saw them sitting in the front row that we really became best friends. We shared six seasons of field hockey, horror movies and chinese food in Eliza’s basement, summer picnics eating popsicles in Valley Forge, and sledding adventures in my backyard. Saying goodbye to them after hanging out and leaving for college gets harder and harder each time.
The comfort of my home came from the people in it. It holds the memories of my sister and I dressing in my mom’s clothes and listening to Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” in the basement while we danced around and tried not to knock over the hand made art and trinkets hanging from the walls. My house has seen my aunts, uncles, and cousins, after their long drives from Pittsburgh and New Jersey, quickly claiming a spot on our blue couch to play charades and tell stories of their childhoods in India. Its wooden floors have felt the stickiness of sweaty bare feet on hot summer mornings and the soft brush of fuzzy socks on long winter nights. Through the years, my house has heard bustling laughter, screaming matches, the pitter patter of a stormy downpour, the fire truck sirens of Santa visiting on Christmas Eve, and excited feet thumping down the stairs contrasting the creaking of tired feet walking up them.
I didn’t love my town until I left it. It’s hard to admit you love a place when you’re so focused on making it out. Staying in my hometown opened judgment from my high school class, I needed to be a big person doing big things in big places. I picked a big school in Philadelphia, becoming just one of the millions of faces in the city. My perspective on home after being in college has changed. It’s the calm to my storm, a reminder of who I am, where I come from, and the assurance that I will reach where I want to be. I moved around a lot as a kid, every place I went, I thought I would leave it behind in time. Life proved this otherwise: I went back to California in high school with my family for Mayah’s wedding and a trip down memory lane, Shreya and I ended up going to the same college, and I still see my home friends on holidays. Eventually, home became the people I belong to, the ones I carry with me wherever I go.