I am waiting for it to happen. It has been 46 weeks, 325 days, 7800 hours, 468,000 minutes, and 20, 080, 000 seconds since we moved from Texas to Arizona. But I haven’t experienced that feeling yet.
The cacti are still a novelty and I am still pulling my camera out, taking pictures. As I drive on the highway, I notice there is not any errant pieces of white littering the pathway. Instead of graffiti, there are intricate etches of lizards and flowers carved into stone, a local hieroglyphic of sorts. The cars move at a perfect cadence, a rhythmic beat, with no honking horns to disrupt the symphony. Little resorts line the streets, the green palm trees opening their arms, convincing the lost that peace is at its doorsteps. From my own welcome mat, in twenty minutes, I can hike deep brown boulders, and take in a panoramic view of the whole city, its natural glory hard to ignore.
But what I am searching for I don’t find in these details. I am hunting for a feeling. I want to call my new place home, but every time I make this attempt, I stop. For the first time in my life, because I am so far away from my beginnings, I’ve had to define what home really means to me.
When I first considered the word home, I thought about the obvious. Home is a place of comfort, of refuge, primarily a resting place for you, your family, and your personal possessions. But for me home is something more. It is not necessarily a single place, but somewhere I can see my beginnings, where people not only know me, but get me, and where I am not constantly clicking my camera. It is a feeling that comes without requiring reminders. That is home.
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What is your definition of home? If you moved away from your “hometown”, when did your new place of residence become home? Is home a feeling or place for you?
Welcome! I am a lawyer turned freelance writer, essayist, and editor. On staff at Literary Mama and the co-founder and co-editor of the literary journal, The Sunlight Press, my essays and reported work have appeared in The Washington Post, The Lily, Saveur, Civil Eats, Brain, Child, ESPN and elsewhere. I am currently at work on a memoir on grief and culture and how it provides perspective on life’s ordinary graces. I invite you to appreciate the ordinary with me. I hope my daily practice of seeing the magic in the mundane helps you celebrate and find more of these moments in your life too.
The way you describe Arizona makes me want to jump on a plane and come and visit, hike and explore right this minute. It sounds wonderful.
But I know very well what you mean – we moved home eight times in ten years, six of those moves being to a different country. Now we have been here in the US for six years and it is finally, slowly, starting to feel like home. I have friends, I know who I am and how I do and do not fit and when I click away with my camera now it is to capture the memories of my daughter growing up here.
It will come, that feeling of Arizona being home, just give it time.
I think it’s cool that you are still finding “new” things in your “new” home…one of these days you’ll pass by the cacti and not even think about it…and then you’ll be home!!
I agree with Aging Mommy, you’ve sparked my interest about Arizona.
And I know what you mean about “home,” we moved so much when I was growing up that I can completely relate. I’ve lived where I do now for almost 10 years, and sometimes I still feel like an outsider!
I think home is a feeling. I moved to AZ nearly 7 years ago and it did not feel like home for the first couple of years. Perhaps because there was so much ‘new and different’ to take in, so much I didn’t know about my surroundings. Growing up in Michigan seems so far removed from me now, although it obviously shaped the foundation of who I am. I have learned so much about myself since coming to AZ and now when I return to Michigan to visit my parents…I am not returning ‘home’ and do not get that feeling until the plane lands back in Phoenix. My life is here now, who knows where it will end up in the future; but for now this has become home.
I will admit that I still take out my camera on occasion and I hope that desire never fades….
Home is where my family is….the four of us. And I think that is why I am struggle so much. Soon the kids will be leaving for college.
Will their dorm room be home for me? Boy, they’ll hate that.
I grew up in LA then moved to NYC and now live near San Francisco. I know what home is…what is so confusing is where are my roots?
Intriguing post. I did one a while back about home being more where my heart is (also a feeling) and not a physical place. I will have an award on my blog post for you in the morning.
I’m not a native San Franciscan. I’ve lived here for many years, moved around several times but haven’t and probably won’t leave the City. This is where I met my husband, where my son was born, where I feel I belong, what I call home. It’s a great feeling. Perhaps in a few years you’ll feel the same?
What a lovely word painting you’ve created, Rudri. And an important set of questions.
Some of us are never quite at home, regardless of where we are born, where we wander, where we settle – for however many years we do so – still longing for that feeling of home. And knowing it may never exist.
In its place:
– Wonderful cities and countries where we have felt alive
– Sensory reminders of comfort
– If we’re lucky, an alignment of “self” that says This is who I am; I am at home with myself, now, even as I change constantly.
I am at home and a foreigner in another language.
I am never quite at home in my skin.
I am at home in my skin when passion inhabits me.
This is who I am, at home with myself, even as I change, constantly.
I always try to tell myself that home is where my kids are, my husband, my heart. But we moved out of my hometown a few years ago. A few years later, we moved back and have been here since. Home may be where my heart is, but comfort and peace is something different.
I think “home”–or the feeling of home, anyway–is about people for me. About being comfortable and known. And like you said: having people who “get” me. Sounds very homey to me. 🙂
I’ve lived in the DC area for 8 years now. It’s lovely, convenient and only 3.5 hours from my childhood home. It took 1 year for me to stop crying over it (I’m dramatic, I admit it), 3 years to feel comfortable, and 5 years for it to feel like home. Now it IS home and it’s strange to go back to Jersey and see it as my parents’ house and not mine. I’m not sure what the difference was for me. Maybe it was kids, or maybe it was the fact that I lived here when I finally started to really feel comfortable with who I was and what my life was shaping into.
I consider where I live home. But I also like to act like a tourist and regularly take pictures. It makes me feel like I haven’t lost my sense of wonder.
Home is not a place, but the people who fill your heart. Find comfort, joy, and the warmth of home in those things that you experience each and every day with your loved ones. But never put your camera away, because it’s truly amazing what you see when you look at it through the lens of a camera. Try capturing more of those everyday moments of home.