By the time week 7 Saturday rolls around, my mother seems utterly unable to contain herself. She ticks a mental box each day, counting back to the day of my return. I was happy to see a change in my second year here at Oxford, as during the first, she would compartmentalise the whole period from her birthday until two weeks after my sister’s birthday according to periods of my absence and presence. She’d always help me unpack, and then conspicuously disappear once the suitcases were to be filled once again with books for the following term. Those copies always weighed heavier on her shoulders than on the scale at baggage drop in Munich.
Although by necessity I adopted means of mediating homesickness, I cannot seem to escape her obsession with containers, boxes, compartments, and birthdays. Last Hilary, my Old English class took a little excursion to the Ashmolean Museum and the others spent a grand total of 30 minutes trying to identify and describe a girdle (a new word my bilingual brain learned that day). Afterwards, the curator brought out the single most unremarkable piece of material culture one can find in a museum, but pointed out the feature which made that object stick with me ever since and haunt my waking hours. “Everyone needs a bowl”, he said. Your life needs to be contained, I heard. Was it not a bowl, a plate, and a few pieces of Tupperware that my parents had to buy at John Lewis the day I arrived at Oxford on my mother’s birthday? Was this not the case because I could not conveniently fit kitchenware into the three suitcases and two carry-ons that contained the rest of my life? Am I not saving my skincare empties to fill with shampoo and conditioner in case I cannot fit the bottles in my suitcase? Do I not always search for PDFs, even if I feel I am betraying my English Language and Literature degree, because all those 500- or 600-page books would take up too much of my – very limited – travel space? Last year I felt overwhelmed by material culture; the need to structure and compartmentalise each physical and abstract piece of my life to make each room (and my mind) feel like home. This year I’ve arrived at a point where homesickness feels unobtrusive and inoffensive, but motion sickness prevails for each journey over the English Channel.
Nevertheless, I must resist getting sick because I need to take this journey at least six times a year. Living as an international student is a persistent negotiation of containment and compromise. In Hungary, Dreher, a very popular beer brand, has the slogan, ‘Annyi a világ amennyit beletöltesz’ roughly translating to: ‘the world is what you pour into it.’ To my brain, infested with culturally fluid semiotics, this slogan reaffirms my obsession with not only containing, but fulfilling my life: at the end of the day, it is up to me how much I make from the world I live in.
Now, I do still empathise with all of us internationals. Naturally, buying bits and bobs in England is an option, but few of us can afford whole new wardrobes, entirely new decorations, and sometimes, even the containers themselves. It is needless to say that containers are essential, yet certainly not a priority when one has umbrellas, water bottles, and warm clothing to pack to survive the English winter. My mother is an angel for finding foldable containers that I can keep in my college room over the vacation, but even so, I find myself storing makeup brushes in an empty sauce jar and an empty detergent pod box. Let it be said, I am by no means sidelining my privilege to be studying here at Oxford. I merely wish to share an often overlooked perspective of going home for the vacation, the very prerequisite of journeys and subsequent comfort of storing selected pieces of your life in a space you have made home for the time being. I hear all of us who struggle to contain themselves. Just as my socks, my emotions are spilling over whenever my heart labours to draw me away from Oxford, or whenever it yearns for return. At the end of the day, my rooms may be disorganised and messy, but within the adorned boxes of memories and nostalgia I am safely contained in the embrace of my people – no matter the distance.