My family was always on the move. We moved from the countryside to the city, from cities to cities, from the outskirts to the city center. We would move numerous times, to different areas, depending on my parents’ financial abilities and interests – sometimes for a better living environment, sometimes for my education, others for their businesses.

I was never sure whether mom was happy about our ever-changing residences. She used to live in Japan for several years, so that might have never been significant to her. Dad seemed tired. To him, it looked like all that mattered was having a solid place that he could call home, surrounded by close neighbors with whom he would take off his shirt, drink beers, watch football and roar with joy every time there was a score. Or maybe it was just my exaggerated imagination of his wrinkles and his bald head. Whatever the truth was, I was under the impression that mom and dad never wished for our mobile lives, yet somehow we always ended up moving. I was never sure about mom and dad; neither was I about my own feelings. Moving constantly, I came to develop a mindset in which I was always ready to pack, to leave, and to say goodbyes. I grew to avoid redundant attachment; who knew if I would move in the next few months? I was never sure if I enjoyed that mentality. Some people said it protected me from unworthy sorrows; others said I was losing my feelings. Which side I was leaning towards remained an unsolved mystery, insoluble, for I never tried to examine the question myself.

Feelings weren’t memorable. It was the new home that was evocative. Every new place was a new world, not necessarily a whole new world, yet there was always a horizon of new things. A new world meant feverish, sometimes disappointing, excitement for new people, new surroundings, and a flow of a new aura into my life. A new world also meant sporadic, sometimes superhuman, efforts of mine trying to learn all that was necessary to know, trying to see all the difficulties that were there in a positive light. I was not confident which place I should call home. I kept asking myself whether home was a matter of how long I lived there, or how I felt about it. But feelings weren’t significant. But time wasn’t notable. But then, mom told me the first place to appear on my mind as I said home was the one.

Our home was in a small alley, where we were shielded from all the dusts, the noises and the dazzling lights. To some people, an alley also meant scary trips every time they had to go out or return home when it was dark. Yet I was never truly scared. Even though it was dark, we had dim lights on the road, gentle lights from the houses. The small space sparked feelings of warmness, safety, and familiarity. It fostered an acute awareness, that I was stepping into a world of my own.

There was a yard in front of our house, where my brother and I would play together every afternoon when I came back from school. My little brother was a 4-year-old baby. He would run around, rhapsodize about random things, burst into laughter, while I paid my attention to nothing but keeping him from falling. Our next-door neighbor would be there, sweeping his yard, then when proceeding onto our yard, he would ask me why I never cleaned the yard, would receive a smile as excuse from me, and clean our yard for us. At the time, I took the yard for granted. It was nothing but blocks of cement, that would injure me if I did not pay attention and stumble. Only later when I had moved did I realize it was the ground of our memories.

In the yard, there was a small area of soil in which my dad grew a jackfruit tree. It grew to be a small tree, but would have jackfruits for us every year. After we moved, my parents erased the tree from their minds, which was natural enough seeing how busy they were. But I never forgot it. I came back to the house occasionally to see how it was performing. Every time I came home from those trips, dad would ask me how it was. Dad cared as jackfruit was the fruit of his life. Mom would joke that I came back because I wanted to eat jackfruits. However, the tree was part of my memories, and part of my brother’s childhood. Those were days when my little brother and I, we only had each other as the yard was no playground. There was nothing else around us but that tree. Even now, the image of that small jackfruit tree is vivid in my head, as if yesterday we were playing in the yard, swaying in the wind while the tree was shedding its leaves.

It was the house before we moved to another place where my family is still living now. It was not the finest house we had lived, nor its location was ideal. Yet to me, it was a charming place where everything was right, where I would come back to revive many of my best memories.