Homeward Bound

What’s really a home? When someone ask us about our home, we tend to say the place we live in – without thinking about it too much. When you are far away from your hometown, you can say your home is your current location, the street you’re living on, or you can feel a little bit nostalgic, and name the place that has seen you grow up. But do those places really matter? We are attached to the memories we make in them, not to them exactly. A house
where you have lived for years but where you hadn’t been happy won’t give you the feeling of a home. Maybe walking past the streetlamp where you had your first kiss feels more like it, even if only for a few seconds. So, how many homes can a person carry with them? Almost as much as memories.

Why do we usually feel like just one particular town or city has to carry all (or most) of them? Of course, if you spend more time in some place, it’s more likely you create
those memories -but maybe not. Places are just a setting, homes are a moving feeling you carry with you. Sometimes your home is a song. Sometimes it’s a person. Sometimes it’s really a place, but a home it’s not just it. I used to ask myself why I couldn’t relate to people when they talked about their hometowns with reverence, now I think it’s because my home is scattered and I pick pieces of it up. And how lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard in more than one place!