Tuesday, May 21, 2013
"Home"
"Winged Migration," the film we watched on Monday on bird migration, our discussion in class today and the film we will watch Wednesday, "Fly Away Home," each featured or will feature meditations on the meaning of the word "home." The great American writer William Faulkner once wrote, “How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home." Write about what the word "home" means to you and a time in your life when you felt a longing for it. Please be as respectful as possible as others will likely share personal reflections. Please also write about 10 thoughtful sentences.
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About three years ago, my parents and I moved into a new house. And although everyone was excited with the new big house and the new baby, I somehow was not able to match their feeling of excitement. At the beginning, the entire experience was rough. So many things changed all at once for the first time in my life that I could feel nothing else but lost and confused. This was the first time I had ever moved, I had also just switched schools, and I was no longer an only child after twelve wonderful years of being my parents' spoiled little princess. When I left my old house, I felt that I had lost my home once and for all. And then, as I struggled trying to get used to the new changes in my life, I finally realized that the word "home" actually meant so much more than its literal meaning... at least to me it did. Many times when people say "home" as opposed to "house" it means that there is a feeling of comfort within the structure they live in. To me, however, the word "home" does not necessarily mean that a place is involved. Although I do agree that the word "home" implies that the feeling of comfort is present, and I do think of my house now as a home, to me, the word means so much more. The reason I say this is because I have come to think of the word "home" as an emotion or a feeling all on its own. Like I said before, the word to me means comfort, but I also think it has much to do with familiarity, love, and acceptance. Due to this, I have been able make myself feel like I'm home no matter where I actually am as long as I put my mind in a certain state or am able to experience a combination of the previous feelings mentioned. Though often times "I feel home" when I'm interacting with people who are special to me, especially when I have deep conversations with them, sometimes a simple memory, or a familiar smell, or even a song can do the trick and give me that sense of comfort. It can give me that wonderful combination of feelings that defines what home is and means to me.
ReplyDeleteOver the course of my life, I've lived in 4 different places. I made my first move when I was about 4 years old. Over the years and after numerous other moving experiences, I still hadn't fully understood, or really thought about what home meant.in my younger years, "home" was just a place I stayed. A place where all my stuff was. Currently, my father and I are in the process of moving. The previous house we were staying, was the house I had spent the majority of my life in. As we drive away for the last time, I was sad. So many things had happened in the 8 years that I had lived there. Only after leaving had I finally understood. As I write this, I'm staying in a hotel. I can honestly say that in a sense this place is my "home", at least for the time being. Home isn't just a place where your stuff is. Home isn't just a place that you sleep at night. Home (at least in my life) is not only both of those things, but also a place where memories are made. A place that you'll remember. A place where you feel safe. No matter where I am, or who I'm with, if all of these things are present, I can make almost any place a "home" of mine.
ReplyDeleteI consider a lot of places my home; Arbor Montessori, Decatur Presbyterian, the GPC soccer fields, the city of Decatur, and now Paideia. However, I do believe there is a difference between emotional homes, like those listed above, and the place you rest your head at night. The physical home that I live in is different from the other emotional homes that I have because everything that my family and I do in our home is private. To give a bit of background information, when I was two years old, my parents and I moved from our house in Decatur to live in a small town in Indiana. After living there for two years (during which time my sister was born), we moved back to Decatur and lived in another house while the one we currently live in was being constructed. I was too young to remember the first house I lived in and I only vaguely remember our house in Indiana. The earliest place my memory can stretch back to remember as “home” was the house we moved to after Indiana while the one I currently live in was being built. It was home because it encompassed everything familiar. This connection reached outside of our house’s walls to include the whole city of Decatur. I have fond memories of walking with my family to see a concert on the square, sitting at the bar in Eddie’s Attic, playing on my church’s playground, and marching in the Fourth of July parade. This made moving into the house I currently live in not so difficult, because it was just on the other side of Decatur. The first night I slept in our current house, I felt very hollow and scared because I wasn’t sharing a room with my sister anymore and the house felt too big. But after a week or so, packed with our normal and fun Decatur activities, the house felt more like a home. Sometimes I will be hit with random memories from living in Indiana or the house we moved to after that. These memories don’t make me long for past homes, instead I just smile in remembering how lucky I am to have had such a wonderful childhood.
ReplyDeleteUnlike other people, I have never fully experienced moving away from home (unless you want to count when I was one and lived in the closet...) so I cannot really relate to that feeling. However, I can relate to the possibility of losing one's home. In seventh grade, my house was flooded with four feet of water on the first floor. That day, September 21, 2009, was a blur as my family and I all ran around the house carrying whatever we could up the stairs--sofas, the dining table, lots and lots of chairs, the tv, etc. While we were racing to get things upstairs before water came up through the floorboards, I didn't really stop to think about what the events of that day would mean to me.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up, my neighborhood acted as my safe haven and my universe where I was free to roam. There, I had my family and my best friend, with whom I spent 24 hours a day with. So when my home was flooded, I was separated from all this. Looking back on it now, the day of the flood was when I realized how much my home meant to me. Even now my parents talk about moving into a smaller house when I graduate, or even before then so we would be closer to school, and the idea of leaving the place I've lived in for the past 15 years makes me anxious for such a big change. I will say that I don't believe home is just about a specific place, but it's also about the people around you. The house we rented for a couple of months while renovation for flood damage went underway
became "home" for me and my family just because we were all there together. The house I live in isn't my only home. In addition to it, there's the family lake house at Lake Burton, which I have visited every summer for as long as I can remember. When faced with the chance of losing my second home in the event of my grandparent's death (it was their house), I was afraid of what might happen if we didn't have the opportunity to keep it.
I think I'd say that my definition of "home" would be a place where you have so many fond memories that even looking at a room or an object reminds you of something from a while back.
Because of work and boredom, my parents moved my family around a lot. So far I have lived in sixteen houses, so growing up my idea of "home" felt rather nonexistent, at least in the context of a specific, physical place. Over the years I have learned that home, at least for me, will never represent a single place or time, because nothing feels familiar to me; change is the only constant. Instead, home lives in what I do and the people I love. So the perfect home for me is my garden. Every house I live in I must make a garden, otherwise it never feels safe or proper. I find home in the beans and tomatoes growing--no matter where I am, I find comfort in that. Going along with the plant theme, food also brings comfort. If I feel uncomfortable or somehow strange in an unfamiliar place, I just need to cook up a huge, beany stir fry to feel better!
ReplyDeleteEdward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros once said: "Home is wherever I'm with you." Although this song may be about his love for a girl, the quote makes me think of what he is implying. He feels "at home" when he is with the girl he loves. I can relate to this -- not necessarily with one person, but with people that I love in general. When I think of home, I think of a place where I know that I can be myself. I am surrounded by people who I love and who love me. Home is whenever I'm with those people. It can be family or friends or teammates. Sure, when I think of "home", I think of my house on Oakdale. But when I think of what home feels like, it's much bigger than that. I think of those who make me feel most at ease with myself and my life and my surroundings.
ReplyDeleteThat is my metaphorical definition of home. There are other physical locations where I relate the word "home". I feel at home in an empty basketball gym. I feel at home on an empty soccer field. Sometimes it's good to feel at home with other people; however, anyplace I can do what I love to do and not worry about anyone watching? That's as home as it can get for me.
For my entire life I have had home in two places, one in Bemidji, Minnesota over the summer and one here in Atlanta. In Bemidji, I go to a language camp for 6 weeks or 4 weeks every summer. Home to me is a place where one can feel comfortable and be themselves. At home nothing feels different, one's life is ordinary when home, your life is plain and natural in a good way. In Minnesota the camp is called Concordia Language Villages. Each camp session is two weeks and I usually go to the French Village and German Village. I call this place home mostly because I met so many nice friends and always enjoy my time there. My mom is also the dean of the French Village, and since this camp is expensive, instead of paying 2,000$ we pay 150$. In other words i consider home to be a familiar and natural place, one where someone can be themselves.
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