It is healthy and necessary, but it can also be traumatic or complicated: there comes a time in life when the term 'ca nostra' begins to feel uncertain.
It often happens when we get older and move to another house, another town or city, or even off the island. Then this unique, precious, and collective 'ca nostra' becomes something more uncertain, and you start using expressions like 'ca nostra de Barcelona' and 'cOur Ses Salines, or you can directly confront 'ca nostra' in 'the apartment'. In times of transition, no formula is perfect, nor are the ways of dealing with the changes suggested by these names: this means going from being two parents and one or two children to being a more or less harmonious group of adults, a family of people who no longer depend so much on each other, but who still love each other.
I'd been thinking about it these past few days, since I returned to Mallorca to participate in the special event that the Mallorca Literary Foundation has dedicated to Biel Mesquida; three days of grand celebration to honor the poetic genius of this giant of our literature. And his friendship, too. It had been two months since I'd "returned" to Mallorca, and almost a whole month since my bosom had been encircled by beds in Barcelona, Brussels, Palma, and the United Kingdom without many opportunities to stop and rest. Suddenly, feeling like I was back in that original 'home of ours' made me feel like I belonged again.
They are the bed and the room of adolescence. They are the books, slightly faded by the sun, there on the shelves, fairytale heroes, old comics. They are photos that I wouldn't let even my best friends see today, and yet, I can still manage that smile when I think about the moment the click was taken, or what happened afterward, or what was out of frame. It's the hum of the heating, the whistling of the wind in the blinds. The things that bark indignantly because they hear a cat pass by. The clean sheets. The emptiness of your closets. Old toys. That smell that houses always have and that you can only smell when you haven't been inside for a long time; something between cleanliness, the smell of the last meal, and everything that can't be said or written. But if 'ca nostra' is one thing, this is above all them. 'Mon-pa-re', 'mu-ma-re', whispering their names with a voice that only resonates in my chest, without even opening my lips. Knowing that you're older now, and that they're not exactly protecting you, but that they are here, and they're looking out for you. And then, being able to sleep.
Returning to 'home' isn't always an easy path. Some people leave one day, or flee and never want to return, while others have the work of learning that they must build one for themselves. I, like those verses from the poem Transmediterranean by Mireia Calafell ("Being on a boat and not knowing if I'm going or coming, / if with the journey I arrive or instead I'm leaving"), I never know if I'm going up the road or coming back, but I know that both at home and in 'is oursI'll be fine. Thank goodness we have each other.
