Culturally Speaking

I just got back from Brazil, and I can’t stop thinking about a sentence I keep repeating in my head: “I’m going home”. I say it both ways, home to Brazil, and home to the US.

I grew up in Brazil and lived most of my life there. And yet, as I land back in the US, I have this weird sensation that seems a bit out of place: this is home now.

It’s a strange thing to sit with. The place that raised me, the language I dreamed in as a kid, the food that still tastes like childhood, the sound of Portuguese all around me, no longer feels like home in the way I expected it to. It felt like a beautiful, important place I was visiting near a lot of people I love. And the home I came back to, in a country I wasn’t born in, really feels like the place where I could relax and breathe.

I don’t think this makes me any less Brazilian. If anything, this trip made me feel it more, since I was looking at the experience from my son’s eyes as well.

Watching him down there changed how I understood the trip. It wasn’t a vacation. It was language exposure, culture exposure, an entire month of him hearing Portuguese not only from me, but from everyone: our family, the woman at the padaria, the kids on the playground, the songs on the radio. It was him eating pão de queijo because that’s what the restaurant serves, not because his mom made a special effort to source it. It was proximity to his vovó that no video call could replicate.

That’s the dichotomy I keep reflecting on. The trip wasn’t easy due to different schedules, different people around us, the jet lag, the logistics of being a guest in a place I used to just live. And at the exact same time, it was one of the most valuable things I could give to my son, setting an even stronger language foundation in his little world.

This is the trade a lot of us immigrant parents make without naming it. Home stops being one fixed place, and starts being something we build in two locations at once: one where we live, and one we deliberately return to, so our kids learn about too. And I have learned to value this feeling of having two homes with two different meanings.

Although it’s a little disorienting to realize the place I’m from doesn’t feel like my primary home in the way it used to, it’s such a beautiful feeling so also be able to offer a second home to my child. And that’s what I want to hold on to!