On days like today, when the Sun is out and I get off work early enough to make time for myself, I look around me and thank God I’ve had the opportunities I have in America. The different people I’ve met, the different cultures I’ve come across, the different ideas and foods and views…I’m so glad I came to this country. And I’m going to have such an amazing future ahead of me here.
But in the back of my mind, I’ll always miss Home.
I’ll always miss running down the streets in my small hilly neighborhood with a hundred-yen coin in my hand thinking about all the ice cream options that wait for me in the ice-box at the neighborhood store.
I’ll always miss climbing up what feels like a million stairs to get to the shrines and temples of Nagasaki to greet the mysterious gods that are said to be listening behind the walls.
I’ll always miss the feeling that I’m constantly being watched over and protected by the secrets that hide between the greenest trees and the largest rocks and the bluest oceans.
Maybe it’s just the child-like wonder that I left there eight years ago, reborn every time I return for a summer, falling back into a deep slumber every time I board a plane back to New Jersey in August, waiting for me. Or maybe it’s the unbroken bond between Mother and Daughter, as they call to each other from across the ocean, never whole without the other.
No matter how much I love the United States, a piece of me will always be tangled in the roots of the trees that grow behind my house in Sasebo. Wedged between the cracks of the old pavement that leads to the elementary school park down the street where I thought up some of my greatest adventures and most curious questions. And just like the fireworks I watched from the cliff with my family every summer, every so often, that feeling of nostalgia and homesickness explodes with a want in me I never thought I’d experience, and I want to scream, “I want to go home, I want to go home…”
Suddenly, I’m eleven again. 
But when those fireworks don’t create that empty feeling in the pit of my stomach, they create the most beautiful, overwhelming feeling of pride, love, and excitement. Because I know I will make it Home again one day, whether it’s for a week or for a lifetime. And no matter when that is, no matter how much changes until the next time I go back, my childhood is preserved on an island. Not even time can change the memories I’ve left there, the days I’ve spent huddled in an embrace by the beautiful, warm love of the trees and the soil and the water and the amazing people of that beautiful country.
