Last weekend, some friends from home came to visit me. As I introduced them, with the tag line, "my friends from home," something about that bothered me. I think it was the part about "home."
When I really thought about it, I realized that I am not quite sure where my "home" is at this stage in my life. I will always be able to say with certainty that I am from New York. And up until a little while ago, I referred to the house I grew up in as "home." For a long time, it was my home-- in every sense of the way. I suppose I have clung onto calling it home because I haven't wanted to admit that for the next few years, while I have a place to live, I have no home.
This is not as dire as it may sound. At least I have a place to live. Having a home seems an added luxury; I actually feel kind of bad expecting both a place to live and a home, considering there are people who go their whole lives having neither option. But knowing that does not make me miss having a home any less.
I just do not know what to make of my living arrangements these days. Every few months, strung out from finals, I stumble into my parents' house, live out of a bag for about two weeks, and call it "going home." But I have always thought of home as a place where I can settle, and a few weeks is not nearly enough time for me to feel like I am at home.
My D-plan sophomore year gave me the chance to get somewhat settled. My roommate and I were on the whole year, so we stayed in the same room. I began to really feel comfortable there -- it was nice to come back to the same place every day. I got used to my bed and I stopped having a heart attack every time the door slammed.
And now I am in a new room, a room I just learned how to navigate my way through with the lights off, a room I am going to have to pack up in less than a month.
This is the time when being constantly displaced will have the least effect on me. Part of me loves the way everything, myself included, is constantly moving and constantly changing.
But still , I wish that I had the option every day to just walk into a kitchen at 4 in the morning, and get a glass of milk. And I don't mean one of those little containers from Food Court that fits in my dorm-size fridge. I want to grab a half-gallon container, pour some milk into a glass I got from a cabinet, drink it, then leave the glass in the sink for one of my other sisters to wash.
The other part of my dilemma has to do with the migration of my other family members. In the past year, my two older sisters have moved out; I am gone for a majority of the year. My parents, with 75% of their brood out of the house, are finally able to decorate the house so it looks like something other than a shrine to teenage instability. So not only do I have to deal with the random drifting in and out of my siblings, I need to get used to the house's new look.
A few days ago, my mind was wandering in class, and I thought about all of the expressions I know about home. I was hoping that some fortune-cookie pearls of wisdom might help bring me at least a little clarity:
"There's no place like home." This one really worried me. If there's no place like home, then I am never going to find a place like my home again. So now I have to find a new home, which will undoubtedly be temporary. Even if I like the new one, I'm going to eventually have to abandon it. And by the time I am finally able to settle down, I may have run out of places where I can feel at home. Sigh.
"You can't go home again." Fabulous. What bitterness gave birth to this little gem? It was too depressing to even think about seriously.
"Home is where the heart is." This one gave me a little hope, since it seems to deal less with location, and more with how home makes you feel. Aha!
After concluding that I should stop thinking for a little while, I realized that maybe I don't need a place to be my home. I always thought home had to be a combination of both where and who, and that I couldn't have a home without each of those components. But maybe if I have the "who" part, then the where is irrelevant.
Up until a little while ago, the people who made my home happened to live with me or around me. That was a fortunate coincidence, and not necessarily an indication that home has to be a specified place.
The people who make me feel at home, and I, are gradually moving away from each other and the place where it all started. But instead of that signifying an end to my home, this can be an opportunity to make the idea of home a continuum. Home can be a concept that is not confined to a single house. Home can extend to each of us, regardless of where we all end up.
