Home: a passage from my mothers Passover Haggadah

The Seder ends in an outburst of longing, and it is a longing for home. No matter where we are, the chances are that we feel displaced. No strangers to estrangement, we carry a homesickness from place to place. Somewhere on earth will feel like home. We will know it down to its homeliest details, and that knowledge will seep through and calm our restlessness, for what was that restlessness but a dream of going home? 

“Your descriptions of the desert — that oceanic, endless glare — are terrible but also very beautiful. Maybe there’s something to be said for the rawness and emptiness of it all. The light of long ago is different from the light of today and yet here, in this house, I’m reminded of the past at every turn. But when I think of you, it’s as if you’ve gone away to sea on a ship — out in a foreign brightness where there are no paths, only stars and sky.”

Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch