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