London. Absence. Home.

I’ve always been a homebody. Throughout my life, I’ve had my family with me and a place to call home. Home is relative, however. I’ve moved over ten times, attended five elementary schools and lived in five states. I’ve had this desire to have a “home” -- to have some place I belong. When we read “The Lost Land” in class, it really struck a chord with me. The discussion of home, the theme of ownership, and having to decide between two things sums up the thoughts that have been going through my head recently.

The London Centre has become home. I have my space, my roommates, my closet, my box; I belong here. I have things I can call “mine. My own.” But some day, I’m not going to be able to come in here. In a month, I’m going to pack up the things on my bunk, empty my closet, say goodbye to my roommates, and close the door to my London Centre and only be allowed to view it from the outside through the coming years.  After December 11, the door code I know won’t work, there will be new students, new professors, new classes, new people sleeping in my bed, putting their clothes in my closet, filling my box with their belongings- but after December 11 it will no longer be “mine.” It will be theirs.

I’ve felt these feelings throughout this entire study abroad. We travel to a place, get settled in, get comfortable with our surroundings, start to feel a sense of belonging, and then we’re off; whisked to a new place to do the same over again. It’s made me realize how fluid life is, something that I see reflected in Boland’s poem. We may currently have all these things we want, but we won’t get to keep them. Her daughters leave to find more opportunity in the changing world, and she’s left with the dilemma of whether she needs to adapt or stay in the place she’s always known and loved.

Ownership is something pondered throughout Boland’s poem. She has ownership, in a sense, over her two daughters, but she also feels like she has ownership of Ireland; the land she loves. There are lots of things in life that I consider to own - such as the Centre, or my houses that I no longer live in but have happy memories in. But it drives home this point; I won’t always own these things. I no longer have ownership over my old homes and I won’t always belong to the Centre. Eventually, we will lose things because this concept is relative. We don’t even have sole ownership of our memories. Eventually "memory itself [will] become an emigrant". We’ll be left with this absence of things longed for that we can’t obtain because they’re things of the past.

In the end, we don’t really own anything. We are given this belief, as human beings, that we own things. We want familiarity, safety, home. But eventually, the things we may “own” will leave us, like Boland’s daughters and my Legendary London experience. Eventually, they’ll be lost to us, no matter how permanent our ownership seems over them. Life will move on, our memories will leave us, and we’ll be left with the absence of our previous ownership.

At a future date, I’ll walk along Bayswater Road, turn onto Palace Court, and stroll down the sidewalk until I reach BYU’s London Centre. And although it was at one point my London Centre, it will be full of new, bright-eyed BYU students, experiencing the things I did. But instead of joining them, I’ll be left with the absence of past memories and feelings I cannot reach. It will be another home that's been locked in my memory until it eventually slips away.