Ship of Fools: Meandering maundering about home and its meaning

Thread: Meandering maundering about home and its meaning Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by anoesis (# 14189) on :

What is ‘home’? What does it really mean when someone speaks of their home, or of feeling ‘at home’? Are they referring to a house, or a locale, or a city, or district, or province, or whatever? Is it to do with an actual place, a latitude and longitude with particular topographic and climatic features? Is it more of a community/allegiance/citizenship thing? Land of my fathers, and all that?

I’m from New Zealand, and Maori, who are the indigenous people here, have a concept called turangawaewae which encompasses any meaning of home you could care to come up with, and somehow transcends them – do check the link, too much for me to paste in here I suspect. I’m attracted to this concept, particularly the way that the physical and the relational are blended, so that you are always associated with a particular locale, because it is the place of your ancestors. And no matter how far you roam or how long you are away, you know that this is the place you will return to upon your death, to sort of become part of the ongoing enrichment of the fabric of the place, as it were.

All of this is a precursor to saying; whatever home is, I’m not sure I’ve ever had one. Obviously I grew up in a house, with a family, in a locale, and (in some senses) in a community…but…well –

The house in which I grew up had no history, it was built new for my parents, who were themselves relatively new immigrants to the country at the time. They were also new (and predictably overzealous) Christians. I moved out of the house and the district as soon as practicality allowed, and I could not go back if I wanted to, because the house has been sold. Because my parents were immigrants there is no wider family around, and the nuclear household of my childhood has broken up, with those of us who are living all in different districts. I had limited interaction with my local community as a child and young person because the preference was to associate with other Christians, rather than sporting or cultural endeavours, etc.

So – in terms of searching for my place in the world, I could not go back if I wanted to – which I don’t. But without that starting point, what is there? You may choose yourself a house, and indeed an area and a community to live within, but that doesn’t make it a home. I wonder if there is something serendipitous about it – it will either happen, or it won’t. What I do know is that while I have thought myself depressed for most of my adult life, when I look deep down, what I see there is not apathy or torpor. Rather, I feel restless, off-balance, ill-at-ease, jarred, dissatisfied, and incomplete. Not quite at home, within or without myself. I had always expected that I would ‘find my place’ eventually, whether it be physical, relational, or metaphorical, but at the moment I am doubting it. I wonder if perhaps I have no place in the world, no meaningful context in which to situate myself, no home. And how can, I, myself, have any meaning without a context?

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

That's interesting.

I don't have a word for you, but I am well aware that the Cree and Dene people (who still hang on to traditional concepts) consider themselves at 'home' in their traditional territories, and don't see the lakes, rocks, trees, etc as wilderness. The people who have stable places where they always live are somehow cheated of being out in the bush. There is a sense of Eden and they are still in it, where places are familiar even when not been there before. Hugh Brody discussed this well in The Other Side of Eden which is about various indigenous peoples in Canada, and I can't recommend it enough.

I get a sense of this sort of home in the bush where, if I can find squaw wood on a spruce or fir (pines being bendy and hard to actually break), I have part of the fixings for a fire, regardless of the weather. Then when the fire's lit, we are now home. We are at our camp. Which will shift whenever we pack up to go, usually by canoe, but also in winter on skis.

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

There is a similar word in Welsh - it is HIRAETH.

Broadly speaking, it means a wistfulness or longing for the Wales of the past or of your heart - of wishing for the homeland or place of belonging.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

In some ways, I am permanently homesick for where I grew up - close to the Pennines and the moors. But I know I can't go back there to live. But it does make for an odd feeling.

It reminds me of the Castaneda book 'Journey to Ixtlan', where somebody who is from Ixtlan says that he can never go back, as it is now a product of his fantasies and memories.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

I grew up in northern Virginia, but I had family in many parts of the state and visited often. I lived in New England for many years, but it never felt like home.

Now I'm in Blacksburg, where I used to visit. It feels like home. It's not just the physical surroundings; it's the customs and manners of the people. If there is no one behind me in the supermarket line and the clerk is struck by something I'm buying, she will ask about it. "Does this stain remover really work?" If I have time, we discuss the stain remover for several minutes. I love this type of human contact.

People around here feel a very deep attachment to their surroundings, their mountains. One reason for the poverty in Appalachia is that people don't want to leave even if there are no good-paying jobs available.

There is a phrase that is commonly heard here and that I never heard in New England--'a sense of place'. It's very strong around here.

Moo

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :

I've lived, at least for short periods, in a wide variety of US places. While in those places, I have always called them 'home,' even when I knew my stay would be temporary. I call my occasional house-sits 'home' for the time I'm there. So I guess for me, 'home' is in part 'where I am.'

At the same time, though, I grew up in New England, and unlike Moo, it's where I feel most rooted. I have talked with other NE natives about a 'sense of place,' and it's a combination not only of the surrounding landscape and one's own nest within it, but also of the seasons and the weather.

It's partly an appreciation of New England's brief bursts of beauty (I am currently surrounded by foliage loud with New England autumn, lit by sunlight we're seeing for the first time in more than a week), and will soon be privileged to witness our baptism-by-first-snows.)

But it's also partly comprised of knowing your enemy intimately: The vast gang of rocks you'll be forced to evict from your garden come spring, and the frost heaves lying in wait for your car while driving. It's the rhythmic necessity of preparing for nor'easters or floods or 8-foot snowdrifts, and then relying on those preparations and coping smugly when they arrive.

In my earlier, more nomadic days, I always found myself returning to New England. It's not so much that this is where I feel most comfortable, because it's not about comfort. It's more like the Robert Frost quote: Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

It's an odd place in many ways: we have neighbors we come to know intimately through discussions in side-by-side driveways over decades of snow-shoveling or leaf-raking or border-weeding together, while never once having crossed one another's thresholds. (We must be the original 'God's frozen people.') It's where you and the fella across the street hate, loathe, and detest each other's politics (which are known solely through respective bumper stickers and never, never discussed), yet regularly bail each other out when disaster strikes, or trade child-minding with, or carpooling to work or the grocery store.

New Englanders will rarely admit to loving it here; we're not easy with discussing our feelings. What we are is committed: committed to our wild and changeable weather and dealing with its aftermath; committed to an acknowledgement that, while we claim to be rugged individualists, we also understand, at every March town meeting, that we really are all in this together (whether we like it or not). We're committed, for the sake of glimpses of a crocus in the snow, or a rainbow connecting one mountain to another, or the fragrance of sweetgrass from a distant farmer's mowing, to the sheer hard work of living here.

Posted by IconiumBound (# 754) on :

quote:
Home is where, when you get there, they have to take you in.
Robert Frost Death of the Hired Hand

Best definition I've ever heard and goes for "church" as well.

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :

Actually, lines 121-22 of the poem read,

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.”

I can't help wishing Frost had written that as a play, not a poem.

Posted by anoesis (# 14189) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
In some ways, I am permanently homesick for where I grew up - close to the Pennines and the moors. But I know I can't go back there to live. But it does make for an odd feeling.

But what if you don't have that? What if you don't feel an identification with the place of your origin? Instead of feeling an ongoing ache for something that you've had, and lost, you feel a longing for something vague and indefinable you've never had. Which is why I wonder if I'm destined to feel rootless for the rest of my life. Can you make a home of subsequent places, or contexts, if you don't have the pattern?

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

Consider this:

For children of the parsonage there is no family home - they get brought up wherever the priest/minister parent is at the time and once the priest/minister retires then he/she has to move.

IME this lack of a family home marks out parsonage children, many of whom will do their utmost to hang onto their own home long after downsizing is sensible or prudent so that their own children and grandchildren can have some continuity.

And I wonder if the same goes for people brought up with the multiple postings of a military family?

Posted by anoesis (# 14189) on :

Awesome post, Porridge! I am inspired by your ode to your surroundings...

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:

...I grew up in New England, and unlike Moo, it's where I feel most rooted. I have talked with other NE natives about a 'sense of place,' and it's a combination not only of the surrounding landscape and one's own nest within it, but also of the seasons and the weather.

It's partly an appreciation of New England's brief bursts of beauty (I am currently surrounded by foliage loud with New England autumn, lit by sunlight we're seeing for the first time in more than a week), and will soon be privileged to witness our baptism-by-first-snows.)

The place where I have felt most embedded in my life was Christchurch (poor Christchurch [Votive]

), where I went to university. However, I knew it was likely to be a temporary habitation. Despite this, I remember flying back down there after the long break, spent in my supposedly home territory. It was a late afternoon in late summer, and as the plane banked sharply before coming in to land, I looked out the window and saw, directly below me, the Waimakariri River, its braids glinting silver in the sun, and I just felt such a rush of joy and euphoria. Half an hour later, on the ground with a pack on my back and a pack on my front, I stepped out of the airport terminal building and the hot, dry, wind slapped me in the face, and again I thought, ahhhhh, yes.... On the other hand, Auckland, where I now live, is technically very pretty - lots of bays and beaches and headlands and a picturesque volcanic cone just offshore to boot, but it doesn't move me, although I appreciate that it qualifies as attractive.

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
...we are committed: committed to our wild and changeable weather and dealing with its aftermath...to the sheer hard work of living here.

I imagine that, with a different set of weather emergencies and different drops of beauty in one's surroundings, that your paragraph could apply very well to Australia also. It's a land which giveth in great measure, and taketh away in dramatic fashion as well. I don't know how it actually feels to be part of the great endeavour of wrestling with all this, because I'm not Australian, but at least I can visualise Australia, in a way I cannot for New England.

Posted by anoesis (# 14189) on :

quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
Consider this:

For children of the parsonage there is no family home - they get brought up wherever the priest/minister parent is at the time and once the priest/minister retires then he/she has to move.

IME this lack of a family home marks out parsonage children, many of whom will do their utmost to hang onto their own home long after downsizing is sensible or prudent so that their own children and grandchildren can have some continuity.

And I wonder if the same goes for people brought up with the multiple postings of a military family?

I had wondered about this very thing. Although I lived in the same house for most of my childhood, my family had no history or connections there, so the stability was moot. Given the choice, I would like to live a lot closer to my brother and my in-laws, so that my kids can interact on a really regular basis with their cousins, because this is something I never had, and I think this might provide them a sense of rootedness. As it is, we are the odd-ones-out, the out-of-towners. As indeed were my parents, the funny ones who had decided to go and live overseas...

Posted by HughWillRidmee (# 15614) on :

quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
Consider this:

For children of the parsonage there is no family home - they get brought up wherever the priest/minister parent is at the time and once the priest/minister retires then he/she has to move.

IME this lack of a family home marks out parsonage children, many of whom will do their utmost to hang onto their own home long after downsizing is sensible or prudent so that their own children and grandchildren can have some continuity.

And I wonder if the same goes for people brought up with the multiple postings of a military family?

My vicar father moved parish when I was six weeks old, around my third birthday, when I was nearly twelve and when I was almost eighteen (the last time was without me – I stayed in the area with work, friends, bedsit etc., I never left the family – it left me!). Within one parish we moved from a rented temporary vicarage to a new build when I was five.

Since leaving home I moved six times in twenty-five years of marriage and again a further twice in the last twenty years. I have lived in Greater London (x6), in Staffordshire, in the South West (4 counties) and now (like most of the others it was a work-based move) in the Midlands.

To me – home is the building to which only my partner and I have keys.

Being a vicarage kid has pluses and minuses - they may be different to other kids’ but I don’t suppose they are, on balance, much better or worse than those of non-PKs. Perhaps the moving left me able to feel at ease in most situations and enabled me to, as I always have, deal with problematic/disappointing environments by, literally and figuratively, simply upping sticks and starting again elsewhere.

Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :

My family emigrated from England to Winnipeg after WW2 when I was 2, and I lived in one house from 1949 until 1965. But my parents never settled there - it was just a place to have a job until retirement and return to the UK. Too flat, too much winter, too alien for them.

After various adventures, I settled and married in rural New Brunswick, and have now lived in this house since 1981. There are specific places near where I am that make me feel "at home", including some that have the requisite degree of flatness to satisfy my Prairie needs, the dykelands such as Tantramar.

plus, of course, I have become part of the story of this village in an assortment of ways, largely because I have taught so many of the locals, and am seen as eccentric but OK.

As porridge says, the seasonal "flashes" of growth and colour and weather matter strongly. ("If you don't like the weather, just wait: it will change quite soon")

I have no significant desire to go back to Winterpeg or England. I am not keen on travel any longer. Some sort of need to be rooted in one place.

My brother, who was 8 at the end of the war never really settled anywhere, but has maintained a house as a base for travelling in Victoria, BC, while collecting air miles. So, no accounting for family traits in the sense of the OP.

Posted by comet (# 10353) on :

"home" is a tricky thing.

I grew up in Alaska, I live in Alaska, Alaska is home. but its a big damn state. I still kind of claim it all, though.

My family had a homestead, where I came into the world and where I spent my first few years. after that we moved around seasonally my entire upbringing. most summers were in Talkeetna (where the homestead is, but not ON the homestead) but september through may we lived in lots of other places. I attended public school in 7 different towns for my growing up. I don't really consider any of those places "home", though I'm pretty sure I'd have a place to stay and a hot meal if I showed up to any of them.

in '02 I moved back to Talkeetna with my family and we lived there until June of this year. It felt like home. the environment, the people, the history. our family is entwined with that place for 3 generations now. We have stuff in the museum. It's home. I know the history of individual trees.

But when things went to hell, I moved to where I am now, a different town, and the town my mother considers home, as she's lived here for something like 16 years. I lived here 12 years ago, for about 5 years. Now, I'm back. it's a little weird.

Am I home? I'm with family, extended family, so yes. but the town? not really. I don't know everyone I see at the store and I don't have anyone's kitchen I frequent for coffee and BS and while I know most of the names in the paper, I don't know any of them well enough to enquire after their kids when I see them at the post office.

But still, I'm in Alaska, I BELONG. so I'm home.

I lived Outside for a short time, and I really, really noticed how "not-home" it is. things are very different, people are very different. Here, I know the rules, I know how to interact with people, I have things in common with them. so even if the town is not-home, the people are, and so I'm still home.

it's partly place - I like knowing every species of plant and animal I see, I like knowing that if the proverbial shit hits the fan I can still feed and shelter myself and my kids. But a bigger part is people, and culture. I belong here.

and yet... and yet... I'm still not-home because my friends, my places, my routines - all is changed. The homestead was sold 20-some years ago, and we left when I was so young it was only marginally home. Houses since then change on a regular basis, but I sure do miss my town.

all that being said, I say to my kids over and over that it's about where your people are. family. if I could move back to Talkeetna but had to leave my whole family somewhere else I'd be lost. and if I had to move to, I dunno, the Gobi Desert, but had my whole clan it tow, it would be home there, too. even in a tent and learning how to get by. so long as we're together.

[ 18. October 2013, 02:06: Message edited by: comet ]

Posted by Galilit (# 16470) on :

I think people have individually different levels of "need" for this home thing.
I was not at all unhappy in NZ (angry, yes, but not unhappy) but when I moved to Israel I felt even better as over time (and with DP) made a home with him, children and pets. It is my home but still not really as I missed out on the early childhood definition phase. But I dam* sure made sure my children had a stable geographical home and that is my proudest mtherhood achievement. I have given 3 people a home that they call home and indeed is the place where they will have to be taken in when they come. THAT is turangawaewae.

Most of all, I love living in a place with it's own languages. Everything is describable and has already been named and described. You have the words to describe what you see around you. There's even an Old Book set there (and thereabouts).
Eleanor Catton (she of the prize) makes this point from the other side of the coin about growing up in NZ in the Guardian (yesterday, today??).

Before that my family of origin had lived in several places in NZ so I felt at home there in a general rather than a specific sense. I AM a New Zealander but it's not home. I was not born and formed there but Israel is where my Life is. I think a lot of people must feel like this...

I have certain particular places ("spots" if you like ) where I feel I especially belong but it is a feeling that lasts seconds or at most as long as I'm there. Intense seconds, so I treasure them but I do not miss them after or look forward to them occuring. One of these is just as you come over the crest of the hill and see the Sea, the Golan Heights and the Jordan Valley spread out before you. Another one is a small (200 trees) citrus grove near us. Another is a hut in a National Park in the north of Te Wai Pounamu/the South Island of NZ.
Funnily enough my elder son is the same.
And also my maternal WWI war-bride Grandmother who sailed to NZ to marry my Grandfather and realised that she was so much happier (personally and in terms of the wider society and its values) than in England (about which up till then she had had no complaint)

Oenesis...you feel what you feel.
I dunno if one can ever define the way out of it. (Maybe I mean cognitize).

Posted by Galloping Granny (# 13814) on :

My Dad was aschoolteacher who moved every three years or so, starting in a sole-charge school when he married, and ending as head of a District High School (K-12 or 1-13). I was comfortable making new friends every so often.
BUT
I was born in Wellington in passing, as my parents moved from the Chatham Islands back to the North Island. Wellington was my mother's home, where all her extended family lived, and where we came for holidays to a bach up the coast, and where my cousins and I would listen to the aunts' and uncles' tales of their wild and woolly childhood. I've lived in Wellington now for more than 50 years and feel belonging tthere, and it's my tangatawhenua, though after spending significant time at Matarangi every year I feel a part of that too.
Incidentally, I've always defined the house that's home as the place where you can walk into a room in the dark and put your hand on the light switch.

GG

Posted by Galloping Granny (# 13814) on :

For tangatawhenua read turangawaewae.

Careless proofreading.

GG

(so am I tangatawhenua?)

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
In some ways, I am permanently homesick for where I grew up - close to the Pennines and the moors. But I know I can't go back there to live. But it does make for an odd feeling.

You are very welcome to visit.

I grew up in South Africa but this is now home to me (Close to the Pennines and the moors!). I have no particular feelings for SA and could easily visit, but don't.

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

quote:
Originally posted by anoesis:
The place where I have felt most embedded in my life was Christchurch (poor Christchurch ), where I went to university. However, I knew it was likely to be a temporary habitation. Despite this, I remember flying back down there after the long break, spent in my supposedly home territory. It was a late afternoon in late summer, and as the plane banked sharply before coming in to land, I looked out the window and saw, directly below me, the Waimakariri River, its braids glinting silver in the sun, and I just felt such a rush of joy and euphoria. Half an hour later, on the ground with a pack on my back and a pack on my front, I stepped out of the airport terminal building and the hot, dry, wind slapped me in the face, and again I thought, ahhhhh, yes....

Sounds like home to me. I've had a couple of friends who've come to Edinburgh from totally unScottish backgrounds and immediately recognised it as their inner Home. Some places have that effect quite strongly: perhaps all places do for some people.

A lot of the time you can identify your home by where you/your family came from, or grew up in, but sometimes it's just out there, waiting for you. Like a spouse or a friend, you recognise them when you meet.

So I wouldn't rationalise away the gift that Christchurch gave you: love it back.

Posted by anoesis (# 14189) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
So I wouldn't rationalise away the gift that Christchurch gave you: love it back.

I do, or I did, anyway. I hankered after the place for years after I left, but I don't think my husband felt the same way about it. He liked it, sure, but I think for him it was because we had a network of good friends there, and many of them have drifted away - somewhat inevitably - over time. It wasn't the place itself, the feel of it, the climate, the topography, the big skies, whatever.

Posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom (# 3434) on :

I grew up in Hawkes Bay in NZ in the 60s and 70s. My sense of home being there is very strong, as almost all my ancestral (originally Scottish) families settled there in the 1860s. I grew up surrounded by family: I have somewhere in the vicinity of 500 second cousins (and the next generation is becoming hard to count), lots and lots of aunties and uncles and some of their parents still alive.

Because all of my ancestors arrived here at least 3 generations ago, I have no real ancestral connection to Scotland, although I can recite my whakapapa (genealogy) back into the 18th century. I was also surrounded by Maori culture, and as a result have the uneasy feeling of inheriting the colonial debt of land theft. NZ can drive you nuts on this point - some Maori would say I am not tangata whenua (people of the land) because I'm not Maori, but I can't call myself Scottish with any degree of accuracy either.

I realised last week that I have now spent nearly half my life in Wellington. I still think of Hawkes Bay as home, and probably will until all my aunties die (which at the rate they're going, won't be until I'm well into my 70s), so I guess I think of home as where Mum and the aunties are.

Posted by Eigon (# 4917) on :

Kipling said that there was always one place where you belonged, and it might not be where you grew up. For him it was the Sussex Weald, and the house Batemans, rather than anywhere in India or the US, where he also lived for a while.
For me it's Hay-on-Wye, which I'd hardly heard of until I got here - though, strangely, there is a large concentration of people with the same surname as me in this area.

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

I have wondered if our current crop in government, through having been to boarding schools since about seven, may not have quite the same attitude to the concept of home as others. They seem to feel it is perfectly normal to expect other people to have to up sticks and move from the places where they don't have to tell their feet to turn at the end of the road; where their aunts and uncles can be bumped into in the shops or the library; where their friends are; where the community looks out for them and market traders know they need to be able to pick up the cheap stuff at the end of the day; to places where they have no contacts at all, simply because they are in a home with a spare room.

[ 18. October 2013, 12:00: Message edited by: Penny S ]

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by comet
I lived Outside for a short time, and I really, really noticed how "not-home" it is. things are very different, people are very different. Here, I know the rules, I know how to interact with people, I have things in common with them.

That's how I feel about being back in Virginia. Shortly after I moved back, I went to a store one day. I arrived at what was supposed to be opening time, but it wasn't open. There was another woman waiting. I had my umbrella with me, and when it started to rain I opened the umbrella and asked the other woman if she would like to stand under it with me. She thanked me and accepted the offer.

In New Hampshire I would have hesitated to make such an offer; people in New Hampshire didn't do things like that. However, not making the offer would have made me feel very uncomfortable. If I have an umbrella big enough for two, and someone else is getting wet, inviting them under it is the right thing to do. In New Hampshire I did not feel free to do what felt like the right thing to do.

Moo

Posted by BessHiggs (# 15176) on :

I was born in east Tennessee. My parents then moved to Scotland, then Maryland and finally to a smallish city north of Boston when I was 6 or 7. That's where I grew up. That's where I consider myself from, but it's not home. I moved to south Floirda for college and ended up staying there for over 20 years until I moved here - rural west Tennessee. When I first got here, I thought Florida was home, but when I went back to visit, I realized that it was just some place I had lived for a long time. It wasn't home.

Here is home. I belong here. I belong to people here. People belong to me here. We know eachother here. Not just names, but families, stories, histories. When I first moved here, folks had a terrible time fitting me into the bramble of relationships. I finally gave up and let people think I was distantly related to a local family with my maiden name. Then I was 'that yankee girl who is dating the nice Lane boy - JL & Fronabelle's grandson.' I married that nice Lane boy which instantly made me kin - in one way or another - to about a quarter of the people I meet. Now I'm Bess. I have a story, a history, a family, and a place firmly entrenched in the local bramble.

I didn't find home until I was in my 40's, and it has nothing to do with the house I grew up in, or the places I've lived before getting here. It has everything to do with the relationships I have here, with my sense of belonging to the community.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

I have an odd hankering for North Carolina, where I spent no more than 24 hours. But everywhere around me there were people with my coloring and bone structure. I have never ever looked like "normal" anywhere else. I wonder if it's the Scots/ Cherokee mix.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

I grew up in (mostly) rural Yorkshire*, but the most powerful sense of coming home came to me on driving back to the grey overspill housing estate where I lived on Merseyside, after a weekend with parents in Yorkshire. I saw the tower blocks and was overwhelmed with gratitude and belonging. Strange I know, and it sounds as if I am sending myself up, but it was true.

*but my earliest memories are of suburbia and industrial town, which might explain why I never really felt I belonged in the country.

[ 18. October 2013, 16:27: Message edited by: Angloid ]

Posted by roybart (# 17357) on :

I've been moved by the posts here, especially by those from those of you with ties to specific places (often rural)that were part of growing up. My sense of "home" would be in such a place, but my own childhood home -- an hour by train from New York City -- has for half a century been completely unrecognizable -- paved over, crammed full of houses, shopping centers, and streets that were not there when I was young. It started becoming so when I was still in middle school. I haven't been back in decades.

I guess, of the places I've lived since then, I felt most "at" home in Manhattan -- in fact, a narrow portion of it, from Soho downtown to Columbia University uptown. But it's been a while since I lived there. What was "home" for a young man at a time when so many wonderful experiences were easy to access and relatively cheap is no longer an option.

So "home" resides in the cultivation of memory. If forced to give an answer based in the material world, I would have to agree with Hugh WillRidemee --

quote:
To me – home is the building to which only my partner and I have keys.

Posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom (# 3434) on :

For me "home" has to be the place that has had the biggest part of shaping who I am. I think that's why I go back to Mum and the aunties. I left the semi-rural community I grew up in at 17, went off to university, achieved 5 degrees and have worked in three different professions since. However, if I look at how I describe my interests in my Ship Profile

quote:
My partner, music, people, cooking, people, gardening, sewing, people...

obviously the things that matter are the things that I grew up with, not the subsequent intellectual and professional endeavours. You can take the girl out of the Bay, but not the Bay out of the girl. [Smile]

Posted by Fineline (# 12143) on :

I don't think I have a sense of home - at least, not the traditional sense. We moved house a lot when I was a kid, and also as an adult I've moved around a bit, and have never had any sense of home being a place. I also don't have a sense of home being my family, as the family I grew up in was rather dysfunctional, to put it mildly, and as an adult I am single with no children. I am British, but feel no particular sense of the UK being my home. Perhaps the nearest to what I assume is a sense of home is when I still my mind and am totally unaware of the physical world around me. It's an inward tihng - an inner peace and quiet, maybe, and what others call being in a world of my own. It happens when I read, when I write (for myself, rather than writing, say, here) and when I pray. And also when I just sit quietly, with no sense of time and no sense of surroundings.

Posted by Hilda of Whitby (# 7341) on :

We moved around a lot when I was growing up. In my adult life I have moved a lot because of jobs.

I moved to the DC area in 1990. Mr. Hilda and I have been living at our current address for 11 years. That is the longest I have lived anywhere in my life ... but DC is not "home" and we do not want to stay here. The miasma of power and ego that hangs over the place is appalling.

The place that grabs my heart is Munich. I spent a life-changing time there in 1984 when I attended the Goethe Institut. The school offered students housing with local people, and I was placed with a wonderful woman. We are friends to this day. I have been back for visits 5 times over the years--more often than anyplace else. My most recent visit was in March of this year. I will never live there permanently, I know, but that city on the Isar is my own private Idaho. Every time I look at my picture books of Munich, I feel a little catch in my heart.

Mr. Hilda grew up in Buffalo, NY. Buffalo is the butt of a lot of snide jokes, mostly from people who have never set foot there. I like Buffalo very much and we have been up there for visits. When we leave DC in a few years, that is where we'll go. Buffalo is very much "home" for my husband, and it certainly feels more like home to me than Washington, DC.

Posted by hanginginthere (# 17541) on :

My parents sold the house I grew up in (in north London) and moved to Yorkshire when I was 19 and had just finished my first year at university. Thus I never really lived in the new location - it was just somewhere my family happened to be living, and to which I went in the holidays. I never put down roots or made any relationships there, and I don't think I have ever really got over being torn from my roots. This has nothing whatever to do with the beauty of my childhood surroundings, because we lived in a very ordinary house in a very ordinary suburb; it has everything to do with familiarity and feeling safe. As a consequence of this the word 'home' has enormous resonance. I think (hope) I succeeded in creating a good home for my kids - at least, they still keep coming back here!

Posted by Jack the Lass (# 3415) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
Sounds like home to me. I've had a couple of friends who've come to Edinburgh from totally unScottish backgrounds and immediately recognised it as their inner Home. Some places have that effect quite strongly: perhaps all places do for some people.

A lot of the time you can identify your home by where you/your family came from, or grew up in, but sometimes it's just out there, waiting for you. Like a spouse or a friend, you recognise them when you meet.

I think this sums it up for me (not about Edinburgh though!). I've been thinking about this recently as my parents have recently (finally!) moved house; they have spent their entire married life (and thus my entire life) in the house they bought just before their wedding, and I didn't think I'd ever see the day they moved out. My dad has lived in the same town his whole life, and my mum was from a nearby village, and apart from me and my sister all of our extended family (aunts, uncles, cousins) live in the same two or three towns/villages a few miles apart. We've talked briefly about what might happen if they get too frail to cope on their own, but know that all of their roots, friends, memories are in that area and to move them in with either of us (I live a few hundred miles away, and my sister is in an entirely different country) would not do them any good at all - it would be about our convenience rather than what is best for them. Home for them, although family (including us) is an important part of it for them, is really firmly rooted in the place.

I don't see that place as home at all though. I feel fine about them moving out of the only house I've ever known them in, much less sentimental than I thought I would, but neither the old place or the new one are 'home' to me. As a teen I couldn't wait to leave, I found it really stifling as a place, and yet there are people I'm still in touch with there with whom I went to school who have settled there quite happily. Initially I felt 'at home' in London where I moved after uni - it was so vibrant, with such interesting people and places, I didn't think I could ever live anywhere else in the UK. But after 15 years it was too much and I was desperate to move somewhere smaller. Moving to Scotland I feel like Firenze describes, that sense of 'inner home' - not all of Scotland does that for me, but the country in general and certain parts of it in particular help me feel like I can breathe again, relax and just be me. I don't have any family ties, either currently or in my past in Scotland (of which I'm aware), but - at least for now - it feels like this is where I want to put down roots and make 'home'. There are other places around the world where I have felt something similar, although mostly the opportunity to actually settle there hasn't happened. But for me it is, as Firenze says, a case of 'recognising' a place as home. That doesn't happen everywhere.

[ 19. October 2013, 14:38: Message edited by: Jack the Lass ]

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

For me, the definition of 'home' is rather fluid, as I travel rather extensively. The nature of my work is so that most assignments are short time, ranging from a couple of months to 2–3 years. Usually, my employer for the moment will provide a place for me to live for the duration of the contract.

In a sense it's not really a problem for me, since I'm ready call 'home' wherever I am; I feel at home quite quickly. However, if I'd have to call a place 'home', it would probably be the city of Olinda in the North-East of Brazil. I own a small place there, although I don't actually live there now (I often rent it out). I'll be there during this Christmas this year though, and I'm already looking forward to it!

Posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom (# 3434) on :

I've never thought of the house I grew up in as home. Its my grandparents' house that has that place in my heart, probably because all the major family events happened there (christenings, weddings, funerals, Christmas, etc.). My mum, who has never lived outside the area, recently moved back to just across the road from this house and it seems to give her considerable satisfaction.

Posted by PeteC (# 10422) on :

I never moved from the time I was born until the month after I turned 19. I lived in SW Ontario for 6 years, but never really considered it home. Home was a place just outside the golden horseshoe on Lake Ontario. Then, 40 years ago, I came to where I live now. After a settling in period in the West end of the city, I moved to the East End of the city. I said this is home. I am most comfortable here.

In my retirement I have discovered the joys of India. That, too, is a home, albeit a winter one. Two places, geographically far and polar opposites claim my heart, I suspect for the same reason. Both my Indian home and my childhood home are "in the country". I can no longer return to my childhood home, but I can return to India.

Ottawa is still home, though.

Posted by Galloping Granny (# 13814) on :

Jack the Lass said

quote:
Moving to Scotland I feel like Firenze describes, that sense of 'inner home' - not all of Scotland does that for me, but the country in general and certain parts of it in particular help me feel like I can breathe again, relax and just be me.

I have to add that, strongly as I feel Wellington (and New Zealand in a wider sense) is my turangawaewae, there is something very powerful that comes over me in Scotland, the further I go north and west from Inverness. I've never lived there, and I won't visit there again, but I can believe in some ancestral tie that brings tears to my eyes and clutches at my heart.

GG

Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :

Moo, I also grew up in Northern Virginia (Falls Church) but moved around a lot after my dad died and then my mother, four years after. I lived very briefly in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Radford, Virginia, where one of my sisters and her husband still live. I lived in Seattle, WA and now live in Georgia.

I think the most alone I ever felt was when I lived in Seattle, WA, although in three years I and my partner plan on relocating there! I don't think I will ever feel "at home" until I'm with God. I just get that sense that the "God-shaped hole" in me will never be mended until I arrive at my true home. But, the Seattle area certainly is beautiful enough to stand in for Heaven for now! [Biased]

Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :

The last of my childhood homes is gone. However New York remains home in an odd way; Home for me is the place where you don't have to translate from the local timing, idiom and language into your own. It's a weak tie but durable.

Posted by Clemency (# 16173) on :

I have a strange relationship with my hometown, a medium-sized manufacturing one in the North of England, an hour in the car from where I live now. I left there forty years ago, but often dream about it and have bursts of intense nostalgia - when I actually visit I get claustrophobia, and want to escape! I suspect it is linked to my mother, who stayed there, and whose last years were very difficult... but it is strange, this want-to-go then want-to-get-away feeling. Anyone else suffer from this sort of thing?

Posted by Galilit (# 16470) on :

Yea!
I would cry on taking off from Ben Gurion, burst into tears at the first sight of the Aotearoa/New Zealand coastline, cry as I took off from Auckland and burst into tears as I landed home again.

Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :

Someone far upthread referred to Robert Frost. Try Judith Wright, and South of My Day's Circle for many of the same thoughts.

We've lived in pour present house for not quite 35 years, most of our married life. It's in suburban Sydney, and we both grew up in the same small suburb. I could all but sky a ball from our house to the house I grew up in, and Madame's family home is not much further. But the place I feel most at home is the property where a cousin now lives, on the Southern Ranges - the wide and open grasslands with timbered ranges running to define it, the spaciousness of it all. My sisters and I did spend quite a bit of time there in school holidays, but they don't feel for it as I do. Judith Wright is talking of very similar country, about 400 or 500 km north.

There is no single word that the ancient peoples of this land use which is comparable to the Maori - given that there are upwards of 700 different languages, this is not surprising - but they all relate to the place of their Dreaming, the place where they are supposed to be. There usually are only 2 or 3 dozen people for each such place, but it is theirs.

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

Although I have never lived in Wales (but have Welsh relatives on one side of the family) I understand instinctively what 'Hiraeth' means. I enjoy going away on holiday for 1 week maximum and then start longing to be home again. As I travel into the South West and see the sign announcing 'Devon' I always let out a cheer (even though, inevitably, that is when the first raindrops start falling!), because I then know that I am 'home'.

Posted by Galilit (# 16470) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
- but they all relate to the place of their Dreaming, the place where they are supposed to be. There usually are only 2 or 3 dozen people for each such place, but it is theirs.

Can you say a bit more about this?
Does everyone have a dream-time place?
How do you find out yours?

Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :

Gallitt, it's far from simple. To start with, there is not a dream-time place. There is the Dreaming of the land, and that sets out where each group lives, the movement around that place, and the relationship between the groups. It is the creation of the land, the peoples and other creatures, the trees, scrub and grasses. . Then there are the Dreamings for each area, and then for each group. If you look at the Papunya paintings, you can see that in what we call August, a group will be at point x. In November, they move to y, and in Match to z, where they meet another group or 2 for ceremonies. Then on from there until in August they are back to x. There will be a half dozen or so stopping place, each to be visited at its proper time.

How do they learn? The deepest knowledge is passed on at initiation and other ceremonies. But the main knowledge is given by living in the group and participating in the group as it moves. You and I could never learn it all.

[ 20. October 2013, 20:50: Message edited by: Gee D ]

Posted by anoesis (# 14189) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Galilit:
Yea!
I would cry on taking off from Ben Gurion, burst into tears at the first sight of the Aotearoa/New Zealand coastline, cry as I took off from Auckland and burst into tears as I landed home again.

I had something similar when we came back from our OE. I was very disappointed to have to leave the UK after only seven months, but we hadn't been able to get 'proper' jobs and, having headed over there immediately after my husband (finally) finished his PhD, we had no financial 'padding' to keep us going any longer.

I got on the plane home with a really heavy heart, feeling like a failure and a loser. Though I wasn't sorry to be saying goodbye to the seemingly endless drizzle and grime of London (we left in January, you see) - I still felt down (and grimy) when I stepped off the plane in Auckland, but going outside, it was of course summer here, and I experienced again that ridiculous, overpowering, blinding harsh sunlight that feels as though is it microwaving your skin as well as boring out your eyes, and I started to feel a bit better. A bit like Chorister and her rain, I suppose, it's not that it's nice, exactly, but it's familiar.

On the three hour drive home to my parents' house, I noticed that there was agapanthus just absolutely everywhere, clinging to banks and spilling out of traffic islands and generally being invasive, which is what it does. I had sort of been trained to regard it as a nuisance, but I appreciated its beauty anew that day. It was as though there were thousands of cheerleaders with blue and white pompoms lining the roads and streets in celebration of something, and it made me feel like celebrating too.

Posted by anoesis (# 14189) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
I have to add that, strongly as I feel Wellington (and New Zealand in a wider sense) is my turangawaewae, there is something very powerful that comes over me in Scotland...

Oooh, me too - however, my father-in-law went on a genealogy binge a few years ago and after he ran out of things to search for in his family, was so obliging as to find all my forebears back to the early 1800s. I was surprised and disappointed to find that there were no Scots or Irish amongst them - not one. In fact I am plain old standard-issue English, with one solitary Welsh ancestor, according to these charts...

Posted by Galilit (# 16470) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
Galilit, it's far from simple....You and I could never learn it all

That's good to know.
I thought for a moment maybe I could discover mine!
Well done them - it's a whole 'nother way of knowing and thinking eh? I'm stunned!

Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :

And we, meaning those who have arrived here since 1788, have caused misery and anguish in the way we have displaced the ancient peoples from the land where they have been for 60,000 years and they believe they are still meant to be.

Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :

I understand the feeling of wanting to 'belong' somewhere, but think it a mistake to latch ourselves onto a place or a group of people if it means that we put them first rather than God.

People are still being 'displaced' thanks to all kinds of factors. Often those who have been displaced displace others. Hankering after a 'home' land or town is often connected to rose coloured glasses, like a workplace we have left.

Here and now really is all there is, and we can make a difference so that others feel 'at home', and change what we can for the better so that we do. We can also enjoy those moments of nostalgia and familiar views, like past relationships, knowing that they have influenced us and are a part of who we are today.

Posted by Cara (# 16966) on :

I have been hesitating to plunge into this thread simply because the theme of "what is home?" is one of the most important themes in my life and one I have often done many "meandering maunderings" about! And once started may never stop...

As Raptor Eye says, it's a mistake to put a place or people above God, but one I'm sure I often make, I'm afraid; after all, it's human nature to feel a deep link to a place, and also to want to feel one is living where one belongs. Which is sometimes one's native/childhood place, and sometimes not, as others on this thread have said.

I think places are more important to some people, less so to others. To me, place is very important, has been since I was young, and became even more so when I was living in the USA for a very long time and found myself missing England in a visceral way that got worse, not better, with the passing years.

Seems to me one's feelings about place also shift as one goes through life--a sense of adventure and desire to live in new places when young can be replaced by an increasing longing for roots and settledness as one gets older.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Yes, wanting to sleep in your own bed seems to get stronger with age. I now find on holiday, I get intense feelings of homesickness; eventually, I overcome them, I suppose. Well, I have multiple levels of homesickness! It's a bit like sedimentary rock, you go down through the strata, and they evoke different intensities of attachment. Getting old is strange, as the past seems to get stronger.

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