Belonging to two places at once

There is a particular moment on a trip home when you realise you have become a guest. The roads have changed, the jokes have moved on, and someone comments that you sound different now.

Then you fly back, and you are the one whose name gets shortened in meetings. Neither place is entirely yours, and the tempting conclusion is that something is wrong with you.

Nothing is wrong with you. You are a person made of two grammars. The distress usually comes not from having both, but from being asked — by family, by workplaces, sometimes by yourself — to pick one and be consistent.

Home is not always a place. Very often it is a feeling of not having to choose. That feeling can be built, and it is most of what we are doing in this work.