A Sense of Home – #10Thankful
I’ve been thinking a lot about home lately.
Kristi’s Finish the Sentence Friday prompt this week was “when it comes to home…” So, naturally, I spent time thinking about the idea of home. And while I procrastinated pondered, I took a look at the things I had saved for my #10Thankful post last this week. Many were simple and beautiful moments of home that touched me in a particular way. Thinking I was onto something, I wondered if these two themes of home and gratitude couldn’t be married…
There are so many ideas regarding home, so many interpretations. If you look up quotes about home, you find words and ideas as varied as the people who spoke them. Each one of them (and at the same time none of them) offers an answer. One or two of those quotes may resonate with this person or that, but not with a third. The reason, at least in my mind, is that the concept of home is something so very personal that perhaps there cannot be a definitive answer.
In his poem, “Death of the Hired Man,” Robert Frost wrote,
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.”
Obviously, there’s a whole lot going on in that poem and we could talk about just that for the rest of the day. But let’s just stick with that little part…that statement about home. It doesn’t say what it seems to say. The line is not “when you go there”; the line is “when you have to go there.” That makes it different, doesn’t it? It seems more about where you go or to whom you turn when you need home…whatever that may be.
So what is home?
For many people, the idea of home is attached to a physical place. But when time moves us forward, as it always does, and that physical building is no longer our home, we find home elsewhere. For some that physical place may be a house – complete with walls and floors and windows and closets. For others, that physical place may be a hotel room, a shelter, or even a cardboard box. Are these any less “home”?
A home may include the people you love and live with every day. But some people live alone. Does it mean they have less of a home? I have lived among family, friends, and roommates and I have also lived alone. In each case the situation was definitely my home. Not all of those circumstances were ideal, not all were meant to be anything more than temporary. At the very least, each one was the home I needed at that time and I never felt as though I didn’t belong.
So home could be whatever sense of belonging we have. That feeling when you are surrounded by who or what is most important to you. Or is home more a state of mind, a sense of being where we belong in life, either physically or emotionally. Maybe home is doing the things that bring us comfort. For me, home is cooking for my family, my daughter learning by my side. It is playing games, reading books, or watching movies together. Home is our everyday routine, the rhythms and patterns that make up our days and nights. Home is that sense of normalcy and “this is what we do.” I am so grateful for the nest my little family shares together and the time we spend in it together. But even when we spend time together out of our physical home, there is a sense of home that goes with us.
I sometimes think home is a season. Certain times of the year make us feel most at home, regardless of where we are. For me, the return of cool weather and the changing of nature’s colors feels like coming home. Maybe it’s because fall signals a return to school and routine and that’s comforting. Or maybe it’s that fall is that harbinger of the homecoming season – the fall and winter holidays where people tend to return to their hometowns, their families, their memories.
Maybe home is any way we grow and learn and change – as a physical home is built, so is the home of “self.” Maybe it’s about working on better balance in life, staying on top of schedules or homework or activities. Maybe it’s getting and keeping the house cleaned or doing some painting or remodeling. Maybe it’s getting more sleep or exercise, working toward a healthier and more productive lifestyle. Whatever process of change brings us to a better version of ourselves could be what makes us feel at home.
Perhaps home is a return to our truest self. Do we feel most comfortable, most “at home” when we finally submit to that? When I consider the person I am today, the life I’m living, the goals I have set before me, I find that none of it is what I would have expected or desired ten or even five years ago. But maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to work. There’s that process of change and growth, of self-realization that takes place and one day not-so-suddenly we wake and realize that this – this – is who I am and who I was always meant to be. For me, it feels like a return to center, a return to what was always there, waiting for me to need to arrive. So if go back to Frost’s line, even if we’re talking about a return to self, it makes sense. When we’re ready to arrive at our true self, when we need to arrive, we have to open the door.
And so home is all of this and more. It is a feeling, a sense of self, something that lives within.
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This has also been a Finish the Sentence Friday post. This week’s topic is “When it comes to home…”
Our host this week, as always, is the lovely and talented Kristi Campbell from Finding Ninee.
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I have yet to open the door.
🙂
I have a home and have always had one. I can’t complain, but I do.
🙂
Home has been many things, multiple places, but I wonder if I will end up in it alone in the end. I can’t predict the future of home, any better than anyone else. Guess that’s okay.
I am focusing on this subject for the essay I’m writing for Full Grown People and so I was glad to see this prompt from Finding Ninee and I am happy to read your thoughts on home also.
I think you’re right, Kerry – it can be many things and in different places. And I think it means something different to us depending on what is happening in our lives at the time, too.
Make sure you share that essay with us – sounds interesting!
This is so very lovely – plus you have a double duty post. I thought about posting in Finish the Sentence Friday on the occasion of my daughter buying her first home.
Thanks, Val. I wasn’t sure the double would work, but maybe it did.
Posting about your daughter’s new home would be perfect! I do think the the linkup is still open…
I had never thought of feeling more at home during certain seasons, but definitely I do. Autumn has generally been the season I like least – mostly because I feel sad summer is over. That’s what comes of living in Scotland, we have no heat to be glad to escape! 🙂 I also love the light in summer and winters here are very dark. So I feel most “at home” in spring and summer.
I totally agree with your last sentence though – home is a felt sense and is within us.
The light in summer and winter is very different, Yvonne. I’ll agree to that! Always makes me think of Dickinson’s poem “There’s a certain Slant of light.” I know exactly the feelings she describes in that poem about the winter light. Of course with Dickinson it’s always about more than it seems as well, so that’s a deep one.
Home is definitely a feeling to me, a state of mind, and most definitely something we hold inside.
Beautiful post. It is interesting how much one word can mean and how significant it is in our lives. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the subject.
Thanks, Shari. I think a word like this means different things to different people. I also think it can mean different things at various times in our lives.
Thanks for visiting and reading!
I love this post! “Home” certainly packs a lot of meaning into such a short word.
Indeed it does, Kristi. And different for each of us.
So many aspects packed into such a tiny little word. I’d never thought of ‘home’ in terms of seasons before, but I can see that, and I can see how much the drench of summer sun really is what makes me feel most comfortable and most alive. The light in the evenings makes me happier and more contented, and the long days feel relaxing and liberated.
As to place…I’ve lived within the same 5 blocks all my life, in spite of five house moves. The patterns and contours of the land are ingrained in my being and I know them with my eyes closed. The smells and sounds and sights are ones I’ve seen thousands of times and I’m completely at ease here, knowing where I am geographically in an immediate and wider context.
But the heart. UGH! I’m so struggling with this at the moment. I’m settled and secure and very much loved here, yet it’s not where I want to be. I SO appreciate the comfort and ease of being where I am, and with who I’m with, and it’s an absolute BOON compared to what I’ve endured the last number of years, in terms of living arrangements and the awful destroyingness that went with them…BUT…it’s not where I want to be at the moment. My heart is across the Atlantic, where it is happiest amongst the people who choose me and love me Anyway.
I know this is a tough roadblock for you right now. I gave you some thoughts on your page earlier. Hang in there. Have faith.
You were one of the people I had in mind when I was thinking about seasons being “home” for some. Definitely you and summer. Clark, too.
I’ve also lived in the same area (albeit not quite 5 blocks) my entire life. There’s a definite sense of home about being where I grew up, where my relatives grew up, where my daughter is growing up…it’s home. There’s history here, good and bad, and that’s part of what makes it so cool.
It’s a huge roadbock and one I just don’t know how to climb it. I suppose I just have to trust that in the end, the timing will be right, and the right opportunities and doors will open as I’m meant to take them. I hope. In the meantime it’s so frustrating and I deal with that very badly 🙁
Home. I do love my home here. But I love my home there, too, and I want to be there.
Summer, I want back. It’s still reasonably warmish at the moment (temps in the low teens (celcius)) but beginning to get rainier and dark, which UGH! Clark I’m sure would empathise. They keep saying on the radio about the autumn solstice and how it’s “definitely” autumn now, and each time they say it is like a tiny cut. Death by a thousand shards of pending winter!
I love that your geographic home is so settled and so generational. It is good. It really is 🙂
You climb one thing, one day, one bit at a time. That’s all. Find the good and happiness in your present, even if it feels like you can’t.
I think you need to save this line and do something with it – Death by a thousand shards of pending winter. That’s awesome!
Trying. Every day feels like a mountain. And…you CHANGED THINGS! Oyyy! 😀 It’s all different and stuff! 😀
And…well, thank you! I might yet do something with it.
Heh. Yeah, I did. I’ve been unhappy with the way it looks and I can’t seem to find quite the right replacement.
It used to be that my “house” was my sanctuary, but now I’ve learned that it’s a feeling not a place.
I definitely feel that way about the house, too, Jennifer. But even more than the place, I think it does come from within. Home can be anywhere.
The whole “this. this is me,” has me thinking about home so so much. It’s all so fluid and yet so grounded that it’s hard to write or hold, I think. Beautiful awesome words though my friend. I need to find a way back to my truest self.
When you of the beautiful words says I’ve penned beautiful words…well, my freaking heart swells, that’s all. 😀
I wonder if finding our truest self is about not seeking it. It’s convoluted, I know, but I think life works that way. I knew I wasn’t who or where I needed to be several years ago, but I had absolutely no idea what a better answer might be. Maybe just admitting “this ain’t it” was the catalyst for change. Maybe we have to be open to whatever comes – literally open to anything – in order for that realization to occur. So maybe we don’t seek to find ourselves, but rather simply allow ourselves to be what we’ve always been at heart.
I absolutely loved reading this. Home is definitely a foreign concept, being that there is no set definition to the term, because it differs for each individual. You words were beautiful, and I am glad that I read this!
Xoxo
Thanks, Tatyana, and I’m glad you loved reading!
If home were a season, mine would be fall. I absolutely love it, and I miss the vibrant colors of fallen leaves. I’m also a fan of Robert Frost. And his poems make me feel right at home! What a beautiful post. Thank you!
Another fall lover! Such a beautiful season. Thanks for reading, Rica! And yes, Frost has that feeling about him. He’s in my group of favorites.
Love how you broke this down and agree home definitely does have different meanings, as well have a different meaning to different people, too.
Thank you, Janine! Our ideas are as varied as we are for sure.
Excellent post Lisa! I wrote one some time ago that was more fitting for this prompt but a good bit of the FTSF’ers had already read it. But my conclusion was home is wherever my parents are.
I also love that you wrote that home is a season. I’ve never made that connection but I have certainly felt it. For me it’s in the Fall. It’s just one little time in the year when I can finally open all the windows and I feel so at home. Very interesting perspective.
Ooh, another fall lover! I am always so in the minority with that so I’m glad for more in my camp! 🙂 I think I remember reading that one about your parents – beautiful. I find that very true as well.
Home is a complicated concept. It’s where I feel comfortable and safe, and yet sometimes, when laundry clutters the family room and paint chips off of the wall, home makes me extremely tense. Sometimes I’m only happy when I know everyone in my family is safe in my home, and sometimes I just want them all to leave. 😉 Thoughtful post, Lisa!
Haha! Julia, you’re so right about the laundry and such. (We need to paint, too – desperately.)
You covered many wonderful ideas here, but the one that really stood out for me was the understanding that what we consider to be “home” in our hearts and lives changes as we age. What I wanted then and where I was happiest, is a far cry from what I want and love now, maybe each stage of life has a home of its own. I have lived so very many places, some felt like home and some were not that welcoming, but I am most definitely at peace in the home I have now with Papa Bear, maybe that’s why I am so happy being here, there is never any strife. Home is where you are loved and accepted as you are.
that’s the way life is though, right? And how it should be. We grow and change and become more of who we are.
I think this is a very interesting take on this. Home for me means safe and love – definitely was reflected when my grandma had passed and my parents moved into her home. It completely destroyed that sense of well being that she had created for me in those four walls. It wasn’t “home” anymore. Home was where SHE was. Not an actual home.
My home is my boys – whenever they are with me and they are always in my heart whenever they aren’t with me. Just like my grandma is and always will be. xoxo
I love the idea of home as safe. And I love that you hold your boys and your grandma in your heart – that’s carrying a little bit of home with you. <3
Personally, I love to marry link-ups, and these were a perfect pair! My favorite is the idea of home as your truest self. I always felt that way, although sometimes I find my truest self out on an adventure, but it’s the fact that I have a true home to return to – that makes me bare it all out there. I love that.
Oh Lisa, I just love this SO MUCH. Reading through all your different descriptions of home, I nodded and reflected through every one of them. Thank you for this beautiful and insightful message, my friend. It really opened up my own perspective on where my home has been through the years and where it is now. <3
Sharing this on my page!
Thank you, Chris. <3 I often think home is more about who we are at any moment more than where we are.