No Place Like Home
Scattered thoughts on the idea of home
Lately, I've been thinking about the saying, “there's no place like home”. These words seem to come into my mind at different times with different meanings and intonations.
Usually, these words are said with a satisfied voice, as you step back home after some time away. Then, the saying is like a sigh of relief, meaning "Oh, how wonderful to be back home".
But lately, I find myself thinking those words in a perplexed and confused way. When you are in the middle of moving houses "There's no place like home" gains a very literal meaning. There really is no place like home right now... No home, at the moment. It feels like I am hanging suspended in the air, or between taking a step on the stairs, but unable to land until I have, hopefully, finally, arrived home. Or made a home.
Which begs the question, what makes a home? What does "home" actually mean to me?
I remember reading the beginning of the book “The Hobbit” where the little comfort-loving hobbit Bilbo is lounging around in a comfortable chair by his fireplace. At least, that’s how I remember it. There are delicious snacks, there is warmth, coziness and comfort. But of course, Bilbo gets swept into an adventure, the type that can only be had when leaving the comfort and security of your home. And as a result, he will never be able to connect to his home in quite as simple terms as in the beginning. After the adventures, his world has expanded, the home is no longer the central point of his existence but simply one place among many in a much vaster world.
I think that what most stayed with me from that book is the vivid descriptions of Bilbo's initial unease at leaving his home behind. I remember thinking, "Wow, he really has a strong sense of connection to his home!" almost in awe, because at the time of reading (as a teenager), I had not yet even begun making my own home. Something in Bilbo's love for his home stayed with me. I started dreaming of creating such a cozy place for myself. But I was also struck by the way how, even such a cozy home would have to be left behind, for adventures to be possible. And that, in the end, that cozy home could not compare with the whole world, and the adventures that awaited there.
Perhaps this is why I have very conflicting associations to the notion of "home". Or perhaps there is a deeper root somewhere, in my unconscious, or in earlier times, in the experiences of my elders and ancestors.
I have grown up in a relatively stable home myself, living my whole youth in one place. But it was not so for earlier generations of my family. On both sides, people moved between cities or countries, searching for work after the second world war, moving to study, forcefully relocated from Carelia, or having to leave their home due to misfortunate events.
I grew up with the awareness that the city I lived in actually had nothing to do with my so-called roots, my parents had just moved there when I was one year old because one of them got a job there. And the city where I was born was the city where they studied, but I have no memory of that place myself and can't say I feel a strong personal connection to it.
Twenty-four years later, I myself moved to an unknown small town because I got a job there. And now eight years after that I am moving back to Sweden, the country where I was born and where I studied, after having lived in Estonia, a completely "new" country for me, where I am not a citizen, for the past two years. But in my adult life I have still not actually lived in Finland, in the country where I spent my childhood and youth.
One would think that this feels strange and scattered, moving around like this, but I have realized that somehow this is actually what feels most natural to me. At least at this point in my life. Maybe it will change in the future. I don't know.
Safety and comfort is often associated with a kind of long term consistency. Something to be relied on for the foreseeable future. So, for many people, these things extend to homes and relationships, and understandably so. Sudden changes can be upsetting, particularly when coming from outside our own control.
But I have learned to accept that a certain level of shifts seems to be a part of my life and I don't necessarily equate long-term consistency with security. For me, that sense of security comes from a deeper place. And the things that change and sway around me can't touch that sense of security.
On the other hand, I haven't personally been forcefilly relocated or had to flee my country, so perhaps my sense of inner security is simply a result of having experienced such a safe childhood.
Still, no matter how safe the childhood, I remember the time when I was a teenager and my parents’ house started to feel smaller and smaller. It felt like my wings had grown out and I could no longer fit inside their house, their way of being, because my life was desperate to develop it's own path. When I could finally take flight at 19 it was a scary, but also a huge relief. I moved across the Baltic Sea to study in Sweden, and the distance was a shock but also supported me in providing ample space of stretching my wings and creating my own way. And my own type of home.
And somehow, I had the need to move around quite a bit. If I count backwards, this is move number twelve. So, since I moved out from my parents’ house, I have now lived in eleven different places. All of them felt right for their time. And with all of them there came the time when I just felt it was time to move on. And now I am at place number 12.
Something that I learned in moving around has been the idea that my home is not so much a specific, external place, but something that I carry with me. Or perhaps more accurately, my sense of home is something I can access inside myself, at different times and in different places.
And yet, some places do indeed feel more welcoming than others, and of course I'd rather choose to make a home in a place that feels safe and comfortable. Who wouldn't?
On the other hand, there have been times when that "safe and comfortable home" has somehow become so oppressive that I've had to leave. In the moment, I don't always know why. But later on, it has turned out that other things, people, or even places were calling me. Or maybe I felt a deep sense of knowing that my particular life path needs to take a sudden turn.
We need to leave that comfortable home sometimes, to enter the adventure of life. Like that little hobbit did. Or like other heroes do, embarking on their journeys.
But I am not a lone wanderer anymore, and relocating to a new place with a child is not so straightforward as it was when I was alone.
A home is no longer simply my own individual place. Now, making a home means making a home for, and with, my family.
I do not have one specific place to share to my child, like one village or a city about which I can tell them: "this here is your home" or "this is the place we come from", as we are a family come together from multiple nationalities. The lack of one specific place opens up for potential that any place could be a home. Or maybe, when zoomed out further, the realization that simply this entire planet, the earth, is our home.
But at times I have been wondering whether my sense of rootlessness - that I don’t have one specific place to call my root - might brings its own risks in a loss of connection. Does my freedom to move and travel around result in an inability to form a deep, consistent relationship to one place, as I know that there is always more to discover? Sometimes it feels like I am always leaving a place just as I have started to develop a deeper root. Is my adaptability in fact nothing but restlessness?
But in my restlessness, and the loss of the specific, perhaps I can gain a different vantage point, a broader overview.
But that broader view still needs to be accessed through the specific windows, of specific places, even if they are in different countries at different times.
I’ve come to realize, that my sense of home comes not so much from the place itself, but more from certain familiar activities that bring me comfort, and help me anchor into the place:
Sitting by my computer, or by my piano or ukulele, working on my craft (visuals, words, sounds).
Making myself a delicious sandwich.
Making Sunday pancakes for my child, topped with chocolate and cut into neat little squares (easier for a toddler to eat) with a berry on top of each square.
Taking a walk in the nature area that is available around my home, touching the leaves of plants and just being there, present in the moment.
Placing the flowers my child has picked in a little jar or water by the window.
Playing with my child, building elaborate lego houses just to watch them being torn down in the next moment.
Staying up after everyone else has gone to bed to get that precious moment alone, writing in my diary or writing these kinds of rambling writings on my phone’s note app.
If we look deeper into the notion of home, we need to recognize that the sense of home is often very closely tied to a sense of self, or a sense of identity. The home is an internal place as much as external, and the home we are able to make in the external world is reflecting the home we have inside of ourselves.
Perhaps I can feel at home in different places because deep inside, I feel at home with myself. This was not always the case, but currently it feels true.
And this is probably the main thing needed for making a home for others too.
This is because the sense of home that others access through us is quite simply, the way we make them feel in our presence. So in order for others to feel at home with me, I need to feel at home with myself. And the home I make for myself is dependent upon how welcome I feel in my own presence.
Of course, while we may affect each other, each and everyone has that “internal home” as well, and it may be in a different state for everyone. In a family that is sharing a home, this means that there are multiple ways of experiencing that same home existing at once. Just as everyone has their own perspective of reality.
Maybe there really is "no place like home", because home is not a place, but a way of being.
It sounds a bit cheesy, but it also feels true.
And yet, of course there is an importance to place, to the physical realm and to the idea if creating connections to it. To care for your corner of the universe, whether it is a house, an apartment, a room or just a tiny corner of a room.
In a sense, I am now embarking on a completely new kind of a home adventure because I am actually not moving into a new place, as I have usually done.
I have now moved to a place that I actually have a deep attachment to: the countryside house where my grandparents spent their last years of life, and where I spent countless childhood summers, and visited regularly throughout my life.
There is a strange mix of the familiar with the new, and of several cycles, or generations bringing their own energy to the place. I was here as a child, and now I watch my own child play in the garden. I am now cooking in the same kitchen where I watched my grandmother prepare numerous meals. There are multiple layers to this place. I can view the rooms through the different lenses of the different times. But it is also fascinating to notice how fast the earlier times get overwrittten with the current, because life itself carries a different weight than the memories do. With our daily routines taking hold of everyday life, the present moment is taking its rightful place as the focus point, and the memories settle into the background. I can feel that the memories and histories are still there, but they need to be intentionally called forth to be accessed.
I kind of wish I could end this writing with saying that I have finally landed and can now live happily ever after. To tie the loose ends and my scattered sense of home/identity into a neat little knot.
But my life doesn’t work that way, nor does it need to.
With moving in here, I also already sense the potential of moving away again. Of life simply calling me, or us, elsewhere. That's just how life works. At least for me. And there is really nothing sad about it. Or maybe there is something sad, but that sadness is OK. This is one place. It is precious now. But there are other places, that are precious, or that may be precious. Times may change and life may start to flow into a new direction.
But for now, I am here. I am home.
And when I leave this place, I will be home too.