Homeland, after all, is a feeling that cannot be clearly defined.
Anyway, for decades it was a term I didn’t get. Especially not as a feeling, which is supposedly what’s attached to it. “I am in my homeland.” is simply a sentence without any ground under it. The reason might be that, legally speaking, I didn’t choose my homeland. I was domiciled, by act of conception and birth, into a country, a village, a house. Oh no, nobody asked me — hardly had I been lying in diapers at the designated spot. Why not? Well, back then, shortly after landing in Füllinsdorf, I wasn’t fluent enough in the language to ask legitimate or illegitimate questions. Later I forgot the whole matter, once the language finally became understandable.
The seemingly important word homeland became more present when Ueli and I opened a record shop (vinyl, not ceramic) in Muttenz. I had an inkling then that homeland might become important as a loaded word. For hours I read and listened my way through the world of Schlager and folk music. No, that was not a pleasure — it was part of the business plan. A village like Muttenz is homeland, and will lay claim to that in many corners of its culture too. No, I didn’t think this through, not even in the slightest, at the time. Schlager and folk lyrics were more of a premonition that some customer, male or female, would one day ask for an LP with homeland-themed lyrics.
And so it came to pass.
Homeland as a term has accompanied me my whole life. Homeland as a feeling, rather less so. I didn’t exactly miss the warm homeland-feeling that gets sung about so much not working on me. My suspicion was that Schlager and folk music, and other poets besides, treated homeland much the same way they treated love. When it isn’t there, it’s simply missing, without ever becoming truly concrete.
Love is… when…
Homeland is… when…
Well, in my seventies now, I’ve come to have some idea of what love is about. But with homeland, something was amiss until about ten years ago. Slowly, creepingly, I’m coming to understand what falls under the umbrella term homeland. No, I haven’t gotten any smarter. I would certainly have noticed that. I think. It was more the discovery of a previously unknown feeling, a moment, a sense of well-being I hadn’t known before.
Being home.
I am home. I am Swiss-Canadian. And I have arrived.
