Foxes have dens, and birds of the air have nests.

I have said a tearful good-bye to our families and a nostalgic good-bye to my country. The airplane that I am seated on is filled with people, each with black hair and almond eyes. Canada is behind me, I am once again the minority.

The lady beside me is wearing a cleansing face-mask while ordering duty-free products from a flight attendant. Just as I could never imagine her in the setting I grew up in, she would never suspect that as I enter her country, I am flying back to my home. In Canada I am often asked, “China is home for you now, right?” My immediate answer is yes. We have after all, lived there for over a decade, but then why does it feel natural, after a few months in Canada, to slide back into Canadian ways?

A more accurate response to the question would be, “I have made a home in China.” But it is not a permanent home. I know that someday I will have to leave, and that if something were to go wrong, Canada would be the place to hold its arms open to me. When I consider that can I really call China home?

But is Canada home? I don’t live there and haven’t for eleven years. We have no house there. When we are back we are guests, and the people and culture have changed in ways that I don’t understand.

When it comes to our kids it gets even more complicated. While my husband and I find ourselves becoming comfortable in Canada again, they anticipate returning to what they consider normal.

My husband and I were admiring neighbourhoods and dreaming of life in a house like the ones we grew up in, complete with a backyard, when my son said, “I can’t wait to go back to China where people share. I can just walk around outside and not feel like I have to stay off the land and away from the things that I see. In China, when we are outside, we are together.”

China is what my kids are used to but do their experiences make it home? It is what they are most comfortable with, what they understand the best, and by far makes up the majority of their experience. But when people look at them they see white skin and light hair. They don’t see a Chinese face. My kids are called foreigners every time they go outside and are constantly reminded that China is not their home.

When they come to Canada people do expect them to fit in. They expect them to prefer pie over tofu, to have watched Canada Day fireworks or to know what Gobstoppers are. And while a few differing actions may be seen as amusing, their differing perspectives easily lead to misunderstanding.

Canada is so obviously not their home and that brings me back to the question, “Is China our home?” It is the place that, after the awe of travel dissipates, we all long to be. It is the place where we are together, where we navigate the challenges and experience the joys, where we make our memories. It is the place where our kids live in their strengths.

So we are returning ‘home’. We know this home won’t always be ours. It is bitter-sweet to leave our families and return to our life but it is where we belong now.

I look forward to opening our front door and entering: experiencing the peace of a space that we have made our own, a place where I can care for my family and connect with those who make our lives so full.

A place so different from my own formative experiences but so uniquely ours.