Hiraeth. I ran across the word on Facebook recently.
I’d never heard of it. Have you?
It’s a Welsh word pronounced HEER-eyeth (roll the r).
We English speakers don’t have a good word to describe hiraeth,
but that has not stopped us from trying to pin it down.
I’m especially drawn to one aspect of the definition. According
to Smith College, “It often translates as ‘homesickness,’ but the actual concept
is far more complex. It incorporates an aspect of impossibility: the pining for
a home, a person, [or] a figure.…”
Pamela Petro says this of hiraeth: “The best we can do is ‘homesickness,’
but that’s like the difference between hardwood and laminate. Homesickness is
hiraeth-lite.… The Portuguese have a word, ‘saudade,’ which is the only true
cognate for hiraeth. [One meaning is] ‘the love that stays’ after someone, or
something…has gone away.”
The University of Wales says hiraeth can include “a mix of
longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness.…”
It has to do with a strong attachment to a home-like place
and a hankering to return to it.
Hiraeth is
the ache,
the longing,
the restlessness,
the vacuum that demands to be filled.
It is something bigger than ourselves.
It lives in our blood and pulses through our veins.
It buzzes,
it flows,
it shouts,
it whispers.
It calls our names: we recognize the voice,
and it tells us that place is where we belong,
that place, where our roots go down deeper than our own
roots.
That is our home of homes.
Val Bethell writes of the sensations and the yearning: “I know
the meaning of … ‘Hiraeth.’
Val lived in Wales, facing west, and observed, “I would
happily travel west, but north, south or east was too difficult…. The mountains
shouted hiraeth, hiraeth! Silently and patiently.
“One day … I was able to obey the call. Eureka! I now know,
yes I know what it means. Hiraeth is in the mountains where the wind speaks in
many tongues and the buzzards fly on silent wings. It’s the call of my
spiritual home, it’s where ancient peoples made their home.…
“Hiraeth—the link with the long-forgotten past, the language
of the soul, the call from the inner self. Half forgotten.… It speaks from the
rocks, from the earth, from the trees and in the waves.…
“Yes, I hear it.
“Yes, I understand what hiraeth means.”
Do you know that feeling?
If you’ve moved from one place to another, you probably
understand hiraeth.
If you’ve lived several decades, you probably know the
longing to return to some special place or time in the past—hiraeth.
I know the feeling—the longing for the geographical place I
belong. Oh, yes, I know hiraeth.
I’ve lived throughout most of Washington State, a few months
in Washington, D.C., three years in South America, eight years in Africa, and
six years in Missouri, but always, always, Puget Sound calls my name—north of
Seattle, just barely south of the Edmonds ferry dock. Richmond Beach, to be
exact—but definitely not the county park.
No, I’m talking about the old beach,
the beach of my childhood, before the county discovered the place and paved a
parking lot and walkways and put a bridge over railroad tracks and fences
around boundaries and built fire pits and posted rules.
No, I’m not talking
about that beach—I’m talking about the wild, fresh, free Richmond Beach of my
youth. I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you.
That place mysteriously shaped me and defines me and still
anchors me. It calls my name. Richmond Beach is where I belong. I am blessed
beyond measure that my in-laws live on that very stretch of beach and I get to
go home—home!—a couple of times a year. Decades later, the place still nurtures
my soul and spirit.
What
place (literal or figurative) mysteriously shaped you and now defines you and
still anchors you and lives in you?
What place (literal or figurative) nurtured
your soul and spirit?
“No matter where I went, my compass pointed west.
I would always know what time it was in California.”
(Janet Fitch, last line in White Oleander)
Fill in the blanks: “No matter where I went, my compass
always pointed ____________. I would always know what time it was in
______________.”
Write your stories!
