On "Home"

This blog is not an official publication of COMEXUS or the US Department of State.

Journal Entry
Wednesday February 1

"Today I miss my home.

I miss the average things, the mundane things, the things I have done dozens of times before and never considered special. I miss shopping at D & W. I miss winter twilights just before we are called to family dinner. I miss the crunch of snow under my feet and the hollow quietness on the hill when the blanket of white absorbs all sound. I miss Grandpa. I miss the smell of Dad's cooking hitting me full-force when I walk in the front door.

I realize that all the things I miss were at home, with my family, before my life as an "independent adult." I don't miss my pink sheets on the mattress in my basement bedroom at the Dayton House. I don't miss the backyard there. I don't miss the living room couch or the dining room table.

I miss the place I'm not supposed to go back to because I'm a "grownup" now. Maybe I miss it because I KNOW I can't stay there forever, or because I miss the closeness of my family around me.

Everyone says "Home is where the heart is." Well then, "home" is a medium-sized gray house on top of a hill with a big oak tree in the front yard and a black dog in the back. "Home" has wild raspberries to the south and bike trails to the north. It has abandoned forts and clubhouses dotted through the woods, it has a tire swing and a hammock and a gnarled mulberry tree and an ancient yellow chair covered in moss that has occupied the same place in the forest for as long as I can remember. Home has two cats and a dog buried in the backyard. Every inch of Home is covered with memories.

Someday I am supposed to make my own home. I can't imagine that. I don't want to imagine a life that doesn't include all the traditions of mine growing up... I don't want my own home, I want our home, our family just like it was when everyone lived in the gray house on top of the hill and we saw each other every day.

This is the dilemma of adulthood. Wanting the New but also wanting the Old, wanting to travel but wanting to be with your parents, loving independence but always feeling slightly lonely. I think everybody has to go through this when they first leave home.

It seems different in Mexico, where even in young adulthood you are NEVER without a home. You live with your parents until you marry, then you move in with your spouse and start a life with them. It's a seamless transition between one home and another. In the United States we move out at 18 or 20 or 21 but don't settle down and start a family until almost 30 (usually)... that's about ten years of wandering. What do you consider "home base" when you've lived in Chicago and two different houses in Grand Rapids and now in Mexico, all in less than two years? 

What about when you have NO desire to "settle down" and it's impossible to imagine living in the same house (or even the same country) for more than a couple years, and you don't know if you'll ever get married and have kids...? What do you call "home" then, when the place where your heart is and always has been is the one place that society tells you you can't go back to...?"