What Does Home Mean to You?

It is a place, it is a person, and each of them holds halves of me.

Photo by Kadir Celep on Unsplash

When I first started writing this article, I thought about the writing style I wanted to adopt.

An essay on home? A third-person account of my experience moving in and out of rentals for a very long time?

It felt too impersonal.

Home has always been a feeling; then, why wasn’t I thinking about how a ‘home’ made me feel?

Turns out, I was avoiding the thought of ‘home’ or the essence of ‘home’ to me. I wasn’t ready when I first thought of writing on this subject. I knew I would be just not yet (then).

Four days from that thought, I arrived where I needed to be to write.

I was home, and my article was home. It had found a place to begin and knew where it was going to end. Isn’t that what a home is?

To someone, it is a person; to another, it is a place.

It is the place we begin, and it is a place we end. Along the way, the little pieces of us that have lived in other places, and in other people, for short spans, are also bits of home.

The place(s)

When I first thought of ‘place’, I thought of my childhood home (figuratively). I did not spend any part of my childhood in it, but it was where my parents put down roots.

We rebuilt an old structure piece by piece. I got my room in the upper right corner and got to choose its color, a pastel purple. I was mature enough to be given the choice and expected to make a cohesive selection. And I was young enough not to know what ‘pastel’ was.

Was that home?

Yes, it was.

For my parents still live there, my roots are still in that city, in that lane, in that balcony that bore my weight every evening, in the sunken section of the wall that still holds the tatters of my world map, now a background decoration for my brother’s den. It was the first stability I knew as home. It is half a home, still.

The other half is where I am. I am married. I have kids.

And I move around a lot, even when I have a place of my own.

The home where I settled with my little family, a breezy, two-bedroom apartment with a playground of a living room, is where the other half of my home lies. I have had this home for a long time too, but this one hasn’t seen me in it for most of that time.

It has a designated desk for my work, a chaotic little corner of things only I know how to find. It has a section for my hobbies, clothes dating all the way back to my college days, and a balcony with a breathtaking view where I take my book photos. Here, I sleep at 12, sometimes later, and wake up at 6 sharp. It is where my kid has recently started schooling. I have my people here, a family friend coming with an overnight bag this weekend.

It is not necessarily the home I will end up in (or maybe I will, who knows), but for now, this is the end.

The people (one person)

When I first thought of people in a ‘home’ context, I thought of my husband, which is surprising. That man has never been my first thought for anything, AT ALL. Turns out, he is first where it matters the most! Eh, good for him. I will tell him that he won this round.

When I first think of home, I think of him. My home is where he is.

When I first found out his job required travelling, I had two options: to settle down and let him travel, being together in gaps, or to travel with him. I left my precious degree on the wall and travelled with him.

That’s also the story of how I started writing professionally, but that’s for another day.

In the early years of our marriage, a hotel room was my home for about 8 months. I never felt displaced, never felt unstable or out of place. I got to know the staff, had breakfast delivered to my room as lunch when I was sick, and sat writing by the hotel pool every afternoon.

I(we) have a bigger family, his and mine, parents on both sides, siblings on both sides, and kids of our siblings on both sides. I can be with all of them, and yet, without him, I am not home. My childhood home feels like half a home when I visit without him. Even here and now, without him laughing with me at the start of this section (about him), it is not home. Or rather, it is only half a home.

Is this what we call “Home is where the heart is”? Highly doubt the heart part, though I can’t deny that ‘He is Home’.

I am always Home

Since I have left so many halves of my home in places of the past, and in traces of the present, all those halves often come together to make one whole. When they don’t, I am still home.

No matter if I am on the road for three days straight, my home is with me. If I visit a hotel for months on end, my home is with me. And those times when I live in places that shelter me only for a couple of years, those are little bits of home too. My people are in it, so I make a home out of it; leave traces of me in it and carry memories of it.

Over time, ‘Home’ became a feeling, and I knew I was always home, even in all those halves.

This piece is written as part of the Writing Challenge: “What Does Home Mean to You?”

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