Coming Home

By Walter Kish

My wife and I came home for Christmas at the end of December. Home, in this case, is more a symbolic notion than a physical place since we actually sold our family house when I left to work in Ukraine for what will hopefully be a five-year project. Homeless, in a sense, we spent the holidays staying over at the homes of siblings, in-laws and other relatives.

The lack of a physical “home” in Canada does not particularly trouble me, as I have always been somewhat of an adventurer and have lived in many places during my life. To me, home is essentially wherever I am. However, to most of my kids who basically grew up in one house for most of their lives, the absence of a family home is a troubling circumstance, particularly at holiday time. Even after they left home to go to college or university, they could always count on returning home for Christmas, Easter or the summer holidays. It provided a secure and stable anchor to their lives. Obviously, their concept of home embodied a strong aspect of psychological and emotional security.

 I have come to realize that the very concept of home is not as simple and straightforward as it may appear – it has multiple interrelated dimensions and applications. From a broader perspective, Canada is of course “home,” the land where I was born and raised, and I will always be a “Canadian” in every sense of the word. However, I am also Ukrainian, and for as long as I can remember I was inculcated with the belief that Ukraine was my “Ridniy Krai” – my native land. For most of my life, this was strictly an abstract concept derived from constant exposure to Ukrainian culture, history and a family environment where Ukrainian identity and values were a fact of everyday life. 

Ukrainians like my parents, however, who were forced to emigrate for various uncontrollable reasons, never gave up believing that their “home” was really Ukraine, even after 40, 50 or more years of living in Canada. They never stopped believing that perhaps the day would come when they would return to the free Ukraine of their hopes and dreams. In many ways, they tried to recreate what they remembered of home wherever they settled in Canada. Fellow Ukrainians in Canada who came from the same or nearby villages were cherished as “Kraiyany” – close neighbours, even though in Canada they may have lived far apart. 

It was therefore quite a shock when many of them finally did visit a free Ukraine in the 90s, to find that their Ukrainian “home” was not quite what they had envisioned. It was dispiriting to face up to the hard reality that they had changed to such an extent that they were now strangers or, at best, visitors to what they had so passionately believed to be home. What many of them had failed to realize was that home was more than just a physical place, that equally important is the human element with all its attendant values, perceptions and relationships, and that during their long absence, they had changed significantly.

Having had the opportunity to live in Ukraine for a number of years in the early 90s and now, more recently, Ukraine has become less a theoretical concept for me, and more a complex, lived reality. I find myself relating comfortably to the place, its people and its culture. My Ukrainian-language skills have also improved to the extent where I am no longer an obvious foreigner and can often pass myself off as a local. I can truly say I feel “at home” here. My wife and I are even seriously discussing the prospect of perhaps buying a little house somewhere in Ukraine and, when we retire, spending part of each year living here.

All of which begs the question of whether an individual can have more than one “home,” or whether the concept is restricted to a singular entity. On this I have no doubts – Ukraine is as much a home to me as Canada is. For me, home is as much a plural concept as friendship or love. As Hermann Hesse once said: “One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect, the whole world looks like home for a time.”