A Review by Kauk Site Ma
of “Home is where? House Warming & My Potsdam”
by K.M. Kaung
It
so touched my heart when I read the Dedication—which says
To all far from home; and far from home without knowing it.
Reading
this story took me back to my days when
I worked for people who were displaced, parted from their families, who lost
their homes, left their places of origin, and are living in a host country,
which everyone knows is temporary.
Those
displaced people had a home that belonged to them, it does not matter how big
or small, how grand or not as Dr. Kaung says:
I always thought that I knew exactly where home was, but now in
America I am not so sure. In Burma I had a home. It wasn’t big. It wasn’t
grand, but it was mine.
The
people I worked with knew where their
homes were—but they cannot go back—for various reasons.
Another quote from Dr. Kaung:
My mother died and it made no sense returning when she was dead,
when I never went when she was alive.
Living
away from their homes made the refugees I worked with feel in limbo; seeming
neither here nor there, and their future must have seemed difficult and distant
to them.
Dr.
Kaung shows the darker side of moving abroad in her story.
She
shows and does not just tell.
*
I learned
from my own mother that she had to leave the place she had lived in with her
dear family and loved, because the house was bombed, during World War II.
They
were neglected and close and distant relatives ignored them.
I
am wondering, shall I take the advice my mother gave us , her children?
She
used to say “A home is not to be seen
as just a physical place. It is a place
of safety which you can take with you wherever you go, because as time passes
the physical home becomes more and more distant to you all and those hours you remember
are gone.”
My
mother taught us to keep in mind the
challenges and differences that will be waiting for us, there in the place which
we once we used to call “a home.”
Reviewed by
Kauk
Sike Ma
3-8-2015
