Home
I have been trying to find a clear definition of home.
It is one of those words like love or menopause that is hard
to put your finger on. What is a home?
I knew exactly where home was when
I was a kid. Home was anyplace my mother
was. If mom was there, things were good
and I was home.
Then, like everything else, home
evolved. I became a mother and home was
a place I created for my children. I took great pride in making it very clear where
their home was. I tried to be there for
them. I cooked and cleaned and had
friends and family over for life’s big events: holidays, birthdays. I collected things: my mother’s paintings, my
father’s piano, artwork and gifts the children had given me. I planted a garden, got a trampoline and put
up a tire swing.
As the children got older my idea
of home evolved again. Home needed to
move closer to where our life was. That
is where things got complicated. People
around me stalled, seeing home as a building to serve, rather than something
that served them. What had once been a home
became a burden. It came with strings
that held on, and soon the strings became chains.
The children left, I left, and that
sense of home shifted again. The kids
started to create homes for themselves.
My eldest now makes his home anywhere he can entertain friends and keep
his climbing gear. While he always has a
place to invite friends and lay his head, I think is he most comfortable, feels
most at home, on the top of a mountain.
My middle son is home anyplace he has
space to create: a garden, something he make from wood, a fire. He is at home on a river with a fishing rod,
or on the seat of a machine, creating his magic with big bucket and a job to
do.
My youngest is home in a house
where his wife and children are happy.
He is home surrounded by their presence and their love.
Home is any place where people make
room for you: where people have to make room because, well, we are family. Home is where the heart is. It is a state of the heart, more so than a
physical place. I am so lucky that my
heart feels at home in so many places, even in my own head, or on an airplane
or in a car. It is not the destination,
but the way we see the world.
After my children left home, I had
to find my place in the world: my new home.
It wasn’t easy at first, as I didn’t know how to be home on my own. But an apartment in the Omani Outback became
home when I discovered I could knock on the window of a new neighbor/ friend
and she would come over to smoke shisha, or a cigar. When my grandson and his family arrived, home
gained a layer of richness.
In Australia, home became as simple
as a donga in the middle of the Top End. As long as I could connect with people
important to me on-line and meet up with school staff for a drink at the end of
the week, I was home.
On visits back to Canada I have
always felt at home at Mary’s place in the Kootenays where she provides me with
love and friendship and a room with a window where the moon watches me
sleep. In Salmon Arm Rea always makes me
feel welcome, and I sleep in the best room in the house, with my own bathroom. I have stayed at Chris and Paula’s, Sherrill
and Royce’s, Travis’s. I know I could stay with so many people and be
welcome.
But right now I am home at Kim and
Michael’s in Darwin. I am in Australia
and very much at home.
A home is so many things, but it is
not a building or a thing. It isn’t a
place to store a bunch of stuff. No one
needs too many things cluttering up their lives. Stuff doesn’t make you happy. A home is where you have only the things you
need to make life richer: lucky you if most of those things aren’t things at
all, but instead the people that love you.
After many years of travel I have
created my own physical space again, a home in Mexico. My friends and family can, and already have,
called that place home now. After a lot
of years travelling about I have finally made a space for them. If I don’t have
room, I will make it: you can always sleep on the rooftop. ‘Mi Casa es su Casa’.
Home can be anywhere: a caravan, a back bedroom, a huge home on acreage
or a small apartment in the city. Home
can be on the sea, on the beach, in the desert: Home is a place where you feel
safe: a place where you can relax. It is
a place where you can go and they have to take you in. Home is a place in
someone’s heart, and it takes up very little room: in fact, it makes space.
Many people who wander are not
always looking for something: one’s destination is seldom a place. It is but a new way of seeing things. I have
wandered a lot and have looked at life from a lot of perspectives. How lucky have I been to come to the
conclusion that Home is a place in your heart which takes up no room at all.
People who understand this are free to go
anywhere, or not. The decisions is theirs. They aren't bound by chains to one particular spot or weighed under by an enormous collection of responsibilities and junk. They aren't required to stay in one place collecting things, or pack a storage container in order to go anywhere.
If you truly understand that home is a space in your heart, then
really, all you need is a carry on and some good shoes.
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