When I was a child, I loved to pretend I had no home.
A strange little creature, you could find me on the sidewalk in front of our house, sitting on a blanket with my best friend, pondering what life would be like if we didn’t really live anywhere at all. A sign of a young girl who had her needs more than met, empathy for those I’d seen who were less fortunate and a vivid imagination? I believe so. But maybe this was also a vague glimmer of the person I find myself now staring at each morning. The first spark of the bohemian fire that now flickers out of my eyes and soul as we conquer the monotonous home repairs that seem to pop up at our house on a daily basis.
Nothing dries up the creative juices like a shower pipe bursting, silences the muses’s voice like the pop of overworked wiring. Hours and energy spent cleaning and planning and painting. Coordinating with contractors and appointment times that require a 10 hour window for a 10 minute fix. A plumber here, a water softener maintenance there. I realize how fortunate we are to be able to own a home. It’s a luxury that many don’t have and certainly a complaint of someone with very few real concerns. But I find myself more often than not, longing for the freedom of flexibility. For the transient lifestyle about which this blog was conceived.
There’s something romantic about renting a space for a period of time in your life. It becomes a backdrop for that specific ecosystem of memory, a point of reference for the overstuffed shoebox of time and space that houses everything a person experiences in a lifetime. When you outgrow a rental, you move on, like a scene change in a movie. I have so many memorable scenes in mine: The tile in the bathroom of my first apartment, a townhouse near the beach. I spent hours running my fingers across the boundless field of tiny white squares in the tub, talking on the phone (and simultaneously falling in love) with the man who would become my entire world. The counter space at my first NYC apartment, perfect for late night wine-drinking and unwinding long enough to see the sun rise. The way the light shifted in the evening through the windows at the Brooklyn apartment where we brought Atlas home, coating everything in hazy orange. I remember watching it move across my lap as I rocked him to sleep for the first time and realized our lives would never be the same.
For me, changing “home” helps to compartmentalize moments in my life that I don’t want to forget. It allows life to feel new again. Maybe we aren’t destined to pursue the American Dream of our parents, who worked for security and stability and four walls to call their own. I’m beginning to wonder whether owning very little frees up space in the brain for invention. While our son is still young, maybe our time is better spent maintaining relationships than a lawn. I think we’re ready to trade equity for experiences.
How about you? What does home mean to you?
What interesting insights on home. As a (former) Army brat, I’ve found that I crave having a stable place to call home, because I never had one growing up. Not even a city to call my hometown.
At the same time, because I moved roughly every two years of my life until I graduated college, I have framed my entire life in this compartmentalized sort of way based on where I lived. I have often said to friends while trying to recall when a memory happened, “Wait, let me think what house I was living in at the time.” I can’t imagine conceptualizing my life without the automatic compartments of new homes, even as part of me still wishes that I’d had one real home to call my own growing up.
Thanks for sharing this post which really got me thinking!
It does take some time to make the new place your home. My wife and I bought a small house 2 years ago and I still have moments where I either want to pull my hair out or just go somewhere and try to forget about the issue, but I guess that comes with the owning of a older home. The good thing about that is you have the satisfaction of knowing that YOU fix that issue, or YOU made that house look like something totally different. I was living with my parents on a farm and still consider that my REAL home, it’s hard to not feel that way with the memories of fun, music, and family. I’m sure in time I’ll slowly think of this place as MY home.
I really enjoy this blog and I hope you keep it up, it’s nice to see such a heartfelt and passionate view of someone else’s life because it truly shows that we all have more in common with each other than we know!
I’ve lived within the same roughly 10 square miles for 20 of my 23 years, and always with my mom, as I’m lucky enough to go to a university within driving distance. Yesterday my boyfriend and I signed the lease for our very own first apartment, and I find myself wondering how long it might take for it to feel like home. In my limited experience, home means comfort and safety above all.
Home is a place you can get away from the world in, where you can be either by yourself or with a companion and just be happy.
I’m really enjoying this blog (and I’ve got plans to make those cookies from the first post too), and I hope you keep up with it 🙂
To me, home is where the heart is. I’ve lived in the same house with my mom for my whole life, and I may have a chance to move in with my boyfriend within the next year or so. I have both good and bad memories in my house; however, at the end of the day I see it as a place where my heart was taught to love the most, especially by my mom. It’s not my piano in the living room or the endless myriad of books in my bedroom (and basement since my room is small) that bring me home, but it is where my heart tugs me.
I adore this post. In the past two years something has changed inside me. I feel as though life has gotten so repetitive . I crave something new & different. I want to go and see the world, I want my girls to see the world. I think it’s so easy to get stuck in that everyday routine with 9-5 jobs ( like my husband has) and school (like my girls have). It’s dull at times. I envy your lifestyle. If I knew we’d be okay, money wise, I would uproot us and go somewhere far away! I think it was be such an awesome life experience.
We are from Nashville, Tennessee. But to me, home is wherever my little family is. Myself,my husband, our 6 month old daughter, and our Border Collie. My husband is a combat medic in the Army, we pretty much move every two years. Our first three years of marriage we spent stationed in Wiesbaden,Germany then Baumholder,Germany. Now we are in Clarksville,Tn at Fort Campbell. And am packing to move to San Antonio in a few months for 11 months. From there who knows where we will be sent, haha.
Im really loving the blog, nice to read about another transient life 🙂 . And we love Coheed and Cambria. So much so we drove all the way to Brussels, Belgium to see a show haha