If you grew up mixed-race, the notion of a home can be amorphous. I’ve lived in numerous places in my life, including the UK, the US and Australia - none of them ever lasting long enough to feel like home. But for thirteen of my childhood years, I lived on a tiny island near the equator.
As a teenager, Singapore felt like just another temporary pitstop. I would often spend my Saturdays roaming around the malls, the sleek cinemas, and shuffling on the bus to and from my friends house 20 minutes away. During those years, my life seemed like an endless merry-go-round. It felt small — restricted to the same old places and the same old people: The same-old bus driver, the same strict school tutors, the same shops, same food. I felt claustrophobic. By 18, I was ready for a change of scenery — to become familiar with the world outside my own that I had grown up seeing on television.
So when I finally graduated high school, I left for Boston and I never looked back.
My parents left Singapore in 2016 and, after university, I moved back to the UK, settling in the quiet sunny suburbs of Surrey. At the time, I had little motivation to return to Singapore: what little family I had resided in Ireland and Hong Kong; the friends I grew up with had scattered across the globe after high school; and we had all sold our childhood homes without so much as a glance in the rearview mirror.
Over the next seven years I adjusted to life outside of Singapore. But as my time away from Singapore grew longer, I felt a growing longing to return. My heart would stop at the mention of someone visiting the city that had been mine for so long. I would jump at an opportunity to talk to them about it. I wanted to know everything they did and if they liked the city. Internally, I grappled with why it mattered to me so much that people liked Singapore, as if I was personally affected.
But last month, for the first time in seven years, I went back.
On the flight over, those old memories started coming back to me: the places, the food, the people. I wondered about whether my childhood home had changed. A small piece of me hoped that the tiny island that held me through my childhood and teenage years — first periods, breakups, friendships, my first job, the anxiety I felt at taking college entrance exams — would be the same as I left it.
When we landed, I embraced of oppressive heat filling my lungs. From the airport to the hotel, we journeyed along roads lined with greenery — the rain trees with its outstretched branches spreading across the sky and palm trees that line the road. We drove past East Coast Park and the man-made beaches where the sea could be viewed and massive tanker ships lay idle along the coast. As we approached the city, Marina Bay Sands appeared in view, setting as a backdrop for the Singapore skyline.
After a quick hotel drop off, and with B in tow, I dragged us through the streets familiar to me — as if my feet already knew the road to take. It was muscle memory.
Many things had changed. Boutique coffee shops and American retailers have staked their claim amongst the throng of shopping malls that connect to each other along Orchard Road. Forever 21 no longer exists, the infamous Abercrombie & Fitch store that led to a swarm of teen girls on opening day has also closed instead replaced by a multi-level Adidas store.
While much of the city had changed, I hoped that my old home had been left untouched. We took a short train journey to the neighbourhood where I grew up. Much of it was different: a new train station was operating, high rise apartments were being developed, an extended cover walkway was built to shade you from the sun, something that didn’t exist seven years ago.
I felt disappointed that I hadn’t been here to see it all change, a part of me wished it had stayed the same, to be exactly as I left it although I know this could never be the case.
We then walked towards my old home, showing B the house where I spent my childhood; the house that I used to wait outside every morning at 6:30am for the school bus — where I was dropped off at exactly 4pm in the afternoon.
Approaching the house, we decided to take a seat on the bus bench across the street, within the shade of the palm trees that lined the road. The house looked the exact same. I pointed out my bedroom window. I pulled up old photographs and videos of what the inside looked like. I tried my best to describe what my childhood home was like and the people that inhabited it. If I had a time machine, I would take us back so he could see the life I lived before him. I didn’t realise until that moment how little thought I gave to my upbringing, to the home that shaped me. I felt regretful for having hated growing up here for so long.
The many small moments that I once took for granted — the school bus driver, who much resembled the laughing buddha, wishing a good morning every day; the sweet but fierce maths tutor I would meet every Tuesday afternoon buying me snacks as a treat for a good lesson; the clammer of pots and lunchtime chat from the local hawker centre down the road from my house — it all came rushing back to me. At that moment, it felt like I was standing in a memory.
For every country I visit, I pick up a magnet either from a local souvenir store or the airport. A little token of memory to keep with me back home. At the airport in Singapore, I picked up seven; one of the skyline, one of the local ice cream potong (or cart), and five of the Singapore dishes I grew up eating: laksa, chilli crab, Hainanese chicken rice, nasi lemak, and fish head curry.
In the beginning of this post I said that being mixed race meant that the idea of home isn’t clearly defined for me. For many years I struggled with it and, sometimes, still do. But I think this trip has opened me up to my past — that Singapore is, in many ways, home to me.
Great article Natalie I know these feelings well....
Do you think that the concept of home changes as we age, or encounter different stages of life? We had a summer house on Lake Ontario that I adored. I didn’t go there for 10 years and when I went back, smelled the air of that freshwater, inland sea, heard the bullfrogs, the clang of the halyards on the masts, I thought my head would explode. It was home.