Moving to the Country Your Family Came From

A homeland may fit us well while its people feel strange, or the reverse.

By Neil Solomon · 3 min read

Picture a couple named Aram and Susan. Aram's grandparents came from a village he has seen only in photographs. For years, he said that when he retired he would go there. Now he is sixty-three, and the plane ticket is real.

He does not know yet what he is going to find. Neither does Susan. I think that not knowing is the most honest place to start.

Two kinds of return

Reading the accounts, I see two kinds of people who go back. Some were born there and left. Others have a family history there but have never lived in the place. The feelings are different.

Those who were born there describe a pull I understand. A man returned to the Romanian village that had, in a sense, given him up. He sounded at peace. A woman went back to Malta at sixty-five, just as lockdown began, and found herself reconnecting in a strange, quiet spring. In Armenia, a man who had been in the US for twenty-six years felt anxious on his return. Another person there said he felt more Armenian in Armenia than he ever had abroad.

Those with roots but no memories describe something tender. In Estonia, a woman arrived in a homeland she had never seen and felt she belonged. She grew sweet peas on stakes her grandfather had left behind. I find that picture moving. A small garden can hold a whole family history. Another person, born in Toronto, said he felt at home from the first visit.

And when it does not fit

Not every return is warm. In Serbia, a person who was born there came back with no local friends and felt lonely. In Hungary, a wife wrote that her husband felt like a stranger in his own homeland. He had been away, and the country had gone on without him. The village and the language were his, but the people he remembered were gone or changed.

In the United Kingdom, a man from the US returned to Yorkshire and missed the pubs and proper banter. He had gone back to a place he knew, and still felt something missing. I enjoy that honesty. Even a return to a loved place can carry loss.

How it differs by place

• In Armenia and Estonia, the stories lean toward belonging, and toward the surprise of feeling at home in a place once unknown.
• In Romania and Malta, people describe a quiet closing of a circle.
• In Serbia and Hungary, the story is about loneliness and about a home that moved on without them.
• In the United Kingdom, the story is about small daily habits, such as talk at the pub, and how much they matter.

A short moment

Aram stood in the village square on his second week.

"The old man at the shop called me 'the American'," he said.

"Does that sting?" Susan asked.

"A little. Then he gave me a coffee, and asked about my grandfather's name. He knew it."

What I make of it

I think a heritage move holds a hope that is bigger than a normal move. We hope to belong. When it works, the reward is deep. When it does not, the disappointment is also deep, because we hoped for more than a house and a view.

It may help to keep two things apart: the place and the people. A homeland may fit us well while its people feel strange, or the reverse. A long stay before a decision could show which one we are really after.