Home

I’m both intrigued and conflicted in trying to formulate my ideas about my notions of “home” and all that loaded word entails.  For me, I’ve had 16 major moves in my life, living in 13 different states.  The one place I call “home” is my grandmother’s house in Tucson, Arizona because I lived there at two different points in my life (once as a child and again as a young adult) and it was the only place I ever returned to visit.  My mother and father live in that house now and it holds so many memories that I feel almost a temporal shift when I walk through the door; I am both a child and adult concurrently.

Questions were posed about how home is related to identity, the concept of homelessness, and even what is it like to be an American.  Personally, these questions are all intertwined.  While not many people have moved as often as I have, I am not unique among Americans in moving away from my family of origin.  Many of my peers have moved several times and don’t live near family.  Perhaps it is an assertion of independence, but perhaps a simpler explanation is more accurate, such as following economic opportunities. 

I do find one thing particularly fascinating about America and our notion of home:  our obsession with the physical space of the home.  (I don’t know that it is uniquely American, perhaps other cultures experience this as well so I could be making a cultural assumption based on my limited knowledge.)   We have several television channels dedicated 24/7 to home improvement shows, hundreds of retail shops (large and small) dedicated to selling home improvement items and decorations.  We are a nation fascinated with nesting and creating the perfect home.  Part of our American dream is even stated to be buying a home with a white picket fence (though no homes seem to have white picket fences anymore).  We spend our weekdays at work and our weekends working on our homes and yards.   In full disclosure, I am a self-proclaimed do-it-yourselfer and take great pride in the fact that I have remodeled each of the homes I’ve owned.  Again, I don’t know if this is a uniquely American trait or not.

Some people have said that after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, our obsession with our homes really increased; that we longed for the comfort, stability, and security that “home” provided that was lost when such unexpected violence erupted in one of our major cities.  We felt so vulnerable and sought a balm to soothe our troubled souls in the form of the comforts of home.   Perhaps this is true. 

So while we are more transient, further away from family, and value our independence, we, or at least I, still crave the traditions, comforts, and stability of home.  And, if that means I have to build it myself, I guess I will.