Haiti Home -> Pittsburgh Home -> Haiti Home
“You will never be completely at home again, because a part of your heart will always be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of knowing and loving people in more than one place.”
A few weeks ago I was blessed with a chance to travel back to Pittsburgh for the beautiful wedding of Megan and Shaun Starkey. It was a fairytale weekend, and I’ve been meaning to write about it since I returned to Haiti, but as things go I got quickly swept up in the routine of life here; better late than never.
I was nervous going home to the States for the first time. After two months in Haiti, I was thrilled at the thought of Target, good iced coffee, and wedding manicures, but in the back of my mind I was also very aware of how hard it would be to say goodbye to it all again. The people, the places, the comfort, it doesn’t seem like it will ever be easier to leave it time and again. Regardless, as my journey to the airport started at 2am I couldn’t help but feel excited.
After a full and exhausting day of traveling I arrived to the Pittsburgh airport and was greeted by my three best friends, a large Mineos pizza, a bouquet of fall flowers, and of course all the girly screams and tears that you would expect. As we ate the pizza on the floor of the baggage claim and caught up on the past two months it quickly became clear to me that nothing had changed. Of course this is just a saying, because literally everything has changed for me, but as I sat and talked with my people it felt like we had never been apart, like we didn’t skip a beat, like I was home.
It was an incredible weekend filled with overwhelming target trips, tons of Pittsburgh food, wedding celebrations, hours of dancing(a highlight for me), and spending time with so many of the people I love most. All weekend I kept the feeling that nothing had changed, it was all just as I had left it. I think I needed that, too, to see that the people and places I care about so much are just as I remember them, waiting to welcome me anytime I come back. It was hard to leave, harder than I can talk about, but as I left it didn’t feel like I was going to a foreign land this time, it felt like I was flying home; my Haiti home.
As I readjusted to my life in Haiti over the next week or so, I realized I had lost the nagging feeling I'd carried with me over the past two months that I was a stranger here, overwhelmed by the newness of it all. It suddenly didn’t feel so overwhelming anymore, it just felt like I was back home, and that was a really wonderful thing. Especially because most of my community in Haiti had left around the time I returned for a wedding in Florida, which left me here alone in our house and caring for two cats, a rabbit, a dalmation, several plants, and at times a sweet 7 year old. I am constantly in awe of God's timing.
My friend Rachel Greene said to me not long ago, “Isn’t it funny? How much life is just about loving the people around you.” She was right, we get caught up in the details, but really it comes down to how well we love the people we choose to do life with. And I am lucky to have people I love so deeply in all the places I call home, even if it makes for some really hard and all too frequent goodbyes, it is indeed a richness to know and love people in more than one place, to have multiple “homes,” and I feel blessed to know that richness so personally.
