Two months into my sabbatical, I’ve been thinking a lot about home. I’m not so much thinking about Boston, where I’ve lived since 2008, or even Connecticut, where I grew up, but rather about what this concept really means to me. People have made careers from this concept - products are said to “feel like home,” hotels claim to be a “home away from home,” the greatest cuisines evoke the feeling of home cooking à la the ending of Ratatouille. “Home” is sellable, marketable.

So, when I think about home, it’s hard not to think about those immediate, Maslow’s hierarchy-inspired feelings. But, I’ve been pushing myself to think of home as something outside of comfort, familiarity, and safety. For instance, the classroom has always been a place that has felt like home to me, probably because it is where I feel competent, empowered, and inspiring. So many teachers I’ve met have echoed a paradoxical truth - they dread speaking in front of a crowd of adults, but they feel totally at home in front of 30 teenagers (many of whom really don’t want to be there). I certainly feel this too - give me 75 minutes with 30 young people questioning the import of parabolas over 5 minutes in front of an auditorium of 100 respectful and well-behaved adults any day. With those young people, I know my job, and I have always felt confident that I can do it well. Home in this sense is doing right by the people who trust you to have their backs. It’s not being loved or even respected, and it can even mean being quite unpopular, but it’s ending the day knowing that you upheld your values.

In travel, there is loneliness among crowds. Lisbon has been, by a wide margin, the most tourist-packed place I’ve been. The steep hills and narrow, mosaic-laid sidewalks are made all the more difficult to navigate by throngs of people spinning in circles, trying to orient their Google maps so they can find the next Instagram-worthy shot. Absent any other context, this would probably be the city that has felt the least like home - I’m just another tourist to drop a euro on the famous cherry liqueur served on the street by little old Portuguese women. But there is more context, and Lisbon has felt like home. I spent a couple of days with my old Tufts friend Matt and his wonderful wife Christen. Matt has the singular power to nerd out about practically anything, and reconnecting with him over beer, wine, and seafood brought me right back to our fraternity days, our long-running Dungeons and Dragons games, and our celebrations with friends over the years. Home in this sense is something old - that deeply rooted ease of talking about anything and everything with someone who makes you feel valued and important.

Matt and I in Lisbon

But home is also something new. After meeting up with Matt for a beer at his hotel on the day he flew in, I walked back to my Airbnb and met Claudia, a German world traveler who had just checked into the adjacent room. The parallels between our travel experiences are almost spooky. She and I are both on ten-month sabbaticals, though hers is coming to an end and mine is still in the early stages. She and I have both prioritized staying for longer stretches in a single place over slap-dash treks through vast quantities of countries - my weeks in Toulouse, her weeks in Malta. Through those similarities I found an instant kinship and a fast friend. We spent evenings on the water and in the city chatting about American and European culture, what travel means to us, and how lucky we are. Funny how two strangers away from home can bring that feeling to one another.

I also think about my last night in Toulouse, when I met my friends Hannah and Camille for board games at a nerdy bar near their apartment. It should come as no surprise to anyone that I feel at home playing games and doing puzzles (I’m a real “organized fun” kind of guy), and even with the instructions in French, nothing has made me feel quite so prepared to call a strange city home than playing Love Letter over drinks and snacks with gracious and welcoming people. Just a few nights prior, I had been stood up by a date for the first time in my life, a weirdly gut-wrenching experience. I texted my old Tufts friend Jackie to gripe and complain, and I realized that, even though my friendship with her has been long-distance since we graduated, she has always been there for me - that classic person with whom I feel like nothing is missed regardless of the time spent away. We simply pick up right where we left off. If that’s not home, then nothing is.

So, home is people, games, kindness, strength, and living by your values. Home doesn’t have an address or a language. It’s having your hand held by an octopus, running up a steep hill, being greeted by name by the grocer across the street, even when the street is an ocean away from where you’ve spent your life. If I’ve learned anything new about myself these last two months, it’s that I can feel at home anywhere in the world.

Travel Update

In the next few days, I will board a bus for Seville, after which I will head down to the coast to stay with friends in Estepona. I’m pumped to spend time with them and their dog before heading up north to Bilbao, where I will run a half-marathon (gulp) before heading to northern France to do a work stay on an apple farm. This will become a more common modality for me as the sabbatical continues - I’ll be working and staying on farms in France and on Réunion, which I’m very excited about, and I’m sure will give me lots to write about.

To everyone back home, thank you for all the feelings of home you’ve brought to my life - I hope my gratitude can be felt across oceans, because it certainly feels like it could circle the globe.

All the best,

Ethan

Puzzle Update

Thanks again to everyone who has been a subscriber to Parrot’s Puzzles. Creating puzzles every week has been such a joy. I just launched a new service where folks can commission custom puzzles for any occasion through my profile on Ko-Fi. If you’re looking for a little extra something for an event, please reach out to me here!

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