The feeling of being home, is a powerful instinct. Where do you find home?

palides2021 said:
What a lovely story about feeling at home! I can feel the love emanating from you as you wrote this! Glad you experienced it!:)
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Thank You so much. I have been extremely lucky to have my life filled with so much love from my parents/grandparents to my husband and his parents and my wonderful two daughters and now my oldest daughters husband and my youngest daughters boyfriend. Like I said so many wonderful memories that I have been blessed with over the years involving every one of those special people in my life.
 

I used to travel a lot when I was young, for many reasons, and lived in different locations. It wasn't until I married and settled, that I started to be more connected to my house. Before, a home was where my parents lived, where we were raised up. I have fond memories of that time.

Now, fast forward to today, and I can honestly say that my house has become my home. Each room carries memories in it, like well-read books, a piano, family photos, paintings, comfortable furniture, icons, and scented candles; echoes of my late husband's laughter could be heard in my mind coming from the dining room. Several dinner parties, given in the past, still have left a mark on me. Gifts from family members remind me of their love. This home shelters me from the common elements. I feel warm and cozy inside my home when it rains or snows outside. Even when my home is "misbehaving" and something needs repairing, I do it in a loving manner.

I play my music in my home, and paint, and write. I watch movies, and exercise in it. I cook delicious meals that I share with my son when he visits. This home shelters me from people who can be mean, and I feel safe and protected inside its walls. Years ago, if someone had told me this, I would not have believed it. I always wondered how people could become so attached to their homes. Now I know the reason. Having to stay home due to the pandemic really has shown me the value of my home.

My home is an extension of me. It has my identity stamped all over it. Years ago, when I was studying psychology, a psychologist told me: "If you really want to get to know a person, visit their home."
 
I was overseas in the service for 3 straight years without coming home once, and when it was time to get discharged, my parents picked me up at the base and drove me home. To get to our town you had to go up a hill and then down, giving the view of a beautiful green valley in late summer and the home that I left in the middle of it. It never looked so beautiful to me, and when I travel that way, I am still reminded of that day.
 
feywon said:
This is going to be more disorganized than most of my remarks--because i'm rushing to get off and get some chores done and because some powerful emotions stirred.

As a child i would lay on our dock in rural Florida and gaze at the stars, Sometimes my eyes would leak--with awe, wonder and a feeling i didn't have a name for till Mom & Dad seperated and Mom took me to NJ suburbs where not nearly as many stars visible. Then i realized what i felt looking at the night sky was homesickness.

Throughout my life i could create a 'nest' for myself most anywhere, having some shelter was important but 'home' always seemed unattainable. i didn't have really strong need to be in specific places with specific people till i had kids. But again if we had books, each other and animal companions--i was happy--as close to home as i could get.

These days this old dusty house is 'home'. My books, memorabilia and current furry companions are here as well as my daughter, i sleep here except if visiting sons in another state or after my eye surgery. The land around it too, The Milky Way has prominent place in the sky. i feel like it's my 'neighbor' and i'm as close to home as i can get in this body.
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Interesting post Feywon.

In my mid forties Hubby and I took long service leave and left Australia on an around the world plane ticket. This was the first time we had left the kids at home - one had just started Uni and the other was newly married. The trip allowed us to travel one way around the world breaking the trip wherever we chose to look around, hire cars, visit friends. We decided to visit north Queensland, Hawaii, the US (western states and New York), Canada, UK, Paris, Rome, Singapore and back to Australia with a side trip north to the Pilbara in Western Australia. Last stop was home, in Sydney. All in all, we were away for 5 months.

I did not feel at home in US but I did feel like a welcome guest. I felt more at home in Canada but was starting to feel a bit homesick and wishing that the plane was carrying me back to Sydney, but I put this feeling aside because I was literally on a trip of a lifetime that by then had taken in the Great Barrier Reef, the active volcano (Big Island, Hawaii) The Grand Canyon and Death Valley and the Rocky Mountains in Canada. In Vancouver we visited the zoo and I lingered with the kangaroos and talked to them like an idiot because they were such a powerful reminder of home.

I thought I would feel very much at home in UK because our ancestors had mostly come from Devon and Dorset but was very much surprised to find that I was as much an alien there as I was in US. I very much wanted to gaze at the stars but the sky was never clear, day or night. For me, home is where I can see the Southern Cross turn over. This constellation is for me my compass and timepiece at night.

I began to question what is means to be an Australian and what an Australian actually is. I couldn't come up with a neat definition because not everyone is like me, with British ancestry. It has been said that you can pick Australian overseas by the way we slouch and lean on walls. Our accent is a giveaway most of the time but in US we were sometimes mistaken for English. We could recognise other Australians by looking at the men's shorts. Stubbies at that time had a notch at the bottom that was pretty unique.

This odyssey taught me that while I am not sure what home might be in the future I would always be a person of the Southern Hemisphere, preferably living in the land of the marsupials and gum trees and in the Harbour City of Sydney. Every time I leave Australia and return I look out the window of the plane to catch a glimpse of the harbour and the arch bridge and I get a thrill of belonging.

All of our travels are behind us now and we are content to be living in our house in the suburbs. We have lived here since the cottage was built in 1966 and I am resolved to keep living here for as long as we possibly can. It is our home in the more narrow sense of the word, It is ours, everything in it is ours, the yard, the trees and the garden are ours and even the wild birds, the insects and the spiders are in some way ours. It is only a few kilometres from our respective childhood homes and so many memories of loved ones from the generation that raised us are reflected in this house.

This is home as it is today

 
As many others have said, home is where ever you and your loved ones are. In our case, ms gamboolgal, myself and the kids were all over the country.

We had to list out all the moves since we married in 1982. Since I worked in the Oilpatch for 43 year - we went to the jobs and were transferred all over the world.

We moved house and home 24 times the first 39 year of our marriage before I retired effective 1-Feb-21. All over the Gulf Coast from West Texas, East Texas, Gulf Coast of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Equatorial Guinea in West Africa and Nigeria in Africa.

I probably spent a good accrued total of 7 to 8 years Offshore working 28/28 or long hitches and early on in my career I was on some remote locations on land that we lived in a Camp. One year I spent 9 of 12 months Offshore Africa.

Home for me and us is being together. Being with ms gamboolgal and time with the kids was and is precious to me.

I do regret being gone working and away so much while the kids was growing up. But I was making a living to take care of them, but I do regret being gone for most of there time growing up. Even more so, because about 2 months before I was originally going to retire - our son, Jeffrey, passed away unexpectedly in our home in Texas while we were in Eket, Nigeria. It was totally unexpected and the Autopsy revealed he had Heart Disease that we did not know about. He passed in his sleep at age 34 at our home in Texas.
We worked one more year after his passing as we were shock and the honest truth is we were more comfortable at our housing in Africa as we dealt with the loss and grieving of losing Jeff.
I then retired effective 1-Feb-21.
No parent should bury a child - it is not natural or right.

We just hit our 40th Wedding Anniversary and we might have one more move in us....maybe? We might move to Water Front Property and build a Lake House or out in the rural country and build a home - maybe.... But we are in no rush as we have a nice place here in Spring / The Woodlands near Houston, Texas.

gamboolman....

Lifes A Dance And You Learn As You Go...
 
gamboolman said:
As many others have said, home is where ever you and your loved ones are. In our case, ms gamboolgal, myself and the kids were all over the country.

We had to list out all the moves since we married in 1982. Since I worked in the Oilpatch for 43 year - we went to the jobs and were transferred all over the world.

We moved house and home 24 times the first 39 year of our marriage before I retired effective 1-Feb-21. All over the Gulf Coast from West Texas, East Texas, Gulf Coast of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Equatorial Guinea in West Africa and Nigeria in Africa.

I probably spent a good accrued total of 7 to 8 years Offshore working 28/28 or long hitches and early on in my career I was on some remote locations on land that we lived in a Camp. One year I spent 9 of 12 months Offshore Africa.

Home for me and us is being together. Being with ms gamboolgal and time with the kids was and is precious to me.

I do regret being gone working and away so much while the kids was growing up. But I was making a living to take care of them, but I do regret being gone for most of there time growing up. Even more so, because about 2 months before I was originally going to retire - our son, Jeffrey, passed away unexpectedly in our home in Texas while we were in Eket, Nigeria. It was totally unexpected and the Autopsy revealed he had Heart Disease that we did not know about. He passed in his sleep at age 34 at our home in Texas.
We worked one more year after his passing as we were shock and the honest truth is we were more comfortable at our housing in Africa as we dealt with the loss and grieving of losing Jeff.
I then retired effective 1-Feb-21.
No parent should bury a child - it is not natural or right.

We just hit our 40th Wedding Anniversary and we might have one more move in us....maybe? We might move to Water Front Property and build a Lake House or out in the rural country and build a home - maybe.... But we are in no rush as we have a nice place here in Spring / The Woodlands near Houston, Texas.

gamboolman....

Lifes A Dance And You Learn As You Go...
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So sorry about your son, gamboolman.
 
I grew up in a ranch-style house in Tampa, FL. It was on a canal, across from a golf course, and I had so many special memories there. I had frequently thought about buying it, even after my parents sold it. When I went back to visit in 2009, it had been torn down and a gauche McMansion had been built that barely fit in the lot. Everything happens for a reason.

Americana Drive.jpeg

We moved to Dallas 16 years ago and we love it here. This is my home.
 
Ronni said:
@Paco Dennis I've read your post several times attempting to interpret what you're getting at because I don't think you're just, or only, referring to a physical location when you talk about or ask about home. "Where do you find home?" is your question, and to me that speaks less to a geographical location or abode than it does to a state of mind.

From THAT perspective (and granted, I may be reading way too much into your words!) I find home in my husband, in my strong, close and loving relationship with my children, in my dancing, and with my dogs. And to a lesser but still very enjoyable degree to the creativity I bring to the decorating of our home, and the artistry and crafts I employ to make it feel warm and inviting. In all of these things I am confident and secure, have a sense of purpose and kinship, and feel grounded and foundational.
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I have thoroughly enjoyed all the posts in this thread...thank you for sharing. Like I said in the OP, no matter what I turn to help me feel secure/safe/home always vanishes, and when I act to retrieve it, I am often times disappointed. At any moment our world can be shattered, and all security seems hopeless. So, yes, you have guessed correctly. This issue for me is one in which I will never be able to have closure with.

 
Irwin said:
Home is where the food is. :)
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My mother's family moved a lot around NSW because her father was in the postal service as postmaster in different country towns. Her mother always said that a man's home is where he hangs his hat. Women want more than that and it can be hard having to pack up regularly, especially when the family keeps growing. My mum had four sisters and one brother quite often the move was made by coastal steamer. Other times by steam train.
 
dseag2 said:
I grew up in a ranch-style house in Tampa, FL. It was on a canal, across from a golf course, and I had so many special memories there. I had frequently thought about buying it, even after my parents sold it. When I went back to visit in 2009, it had been torn down and a gauche McMansion had been built that barely fit in the lot. Everything happens for a reason.

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We moved to Dallas 16 years ago and we love it here. This is my home.
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I've seen so many places i lived, not just the building but whole area had change radically when happened to be in the area again years later. Most becoming more congested.

Dad spent last 25-30 yrs of his life living on canal front property in Tampa. After he died one of my older sisters whose name he'd added to the deed after his last wife's death sold it --for lot less than she could have gotten for it because the buyers said they weren't going to change it just make repairs.

A few years later she was going thru on way to her Waimauma (sp?) High School reunion and took a look, sure enough they'd taken Dad's house down-a gauche McMansion not the words she used but what the replacement sounded like. While i understood her disappointment that they'd conned her, i never understood why she'd wanted a buyer to not change it.

It wasn't like we grew up there. Yeah, Dad died there (physically in the house, my then #3 DH, daughter and i cared for him his last 6 weeks of life), but he would have hated the idea of it being given any significance. He was cremated and ashes scattered at sea where he scattered his last wife's a couple of years before because he didn't like the idea of cemetaries and people weeping over tombstones.

.
 
Right where I'm at today. I live in my family home (our 2nd one). We moved here when I was going in to 9th grade.
Left when I married, but always came back home.

So many memories...there is my mother's furniture and mine together here. Pictures of our many parties and BBQs in every drawer and on the fridge.

My nephew is so fond of this house and all that it represents from his years growing up and being around his grandparents, that he will be inheriting it from me. Love that!
 
My home is wherever I am. I carry my home in my heart.
The house where I grew up burned down and my stepdad's house was torn down.
I can go back to see my brothers in their homes where they have lived for many years, but I have lived in many houses, and never was super attached to them. I do miss the home where my ex's family had been for 3 generations, and the memories from there. That was the place I grew the deepest roots. I miss that old house and the yard with all the perennials.
 
My home is where I live presently. Just a small studio apartment, but it is all me. This is the first time I have lived alone, no child, no husband and no parents or brother. Just me. I have made it exactly the way I want it. I know it sounds strange but I have lived in much more pricey homes with everything I wanted..........but, I am happiest here than I have ever been in my whole life. It is true, home is where the heart is.
 
katlupe said:
My home is where I live presently. Just a small studio apartment, but it is all me. This is the first time I have lived alone, no child, no husband and no parents or brother. Just me. I have made it exactly the way I want it. I know it sounds strange but I have lived in much more pricey homes with everything I wanted..........but, I am happiest here than I have ever been in my whole life. It is true, home is where the heart is.
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Sounds wonderful.
 
katlupe said:
My home is where I live presently. Just a small studio apartment, but it is all me. This is the first time I have lived alone, no child, no husband and no parents or brother. Just me. I have made it exactly the way I want it. I know it sounds strange but I have lived in much more pricey homes with everything I wanted..........but, I am happiest here than I have ever been in my whole life. It is true, home is where the heart is.
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I too live in a studio and I was told by my grandson's father, that he could not believe why nobody has ever rescued me from it. To this day he refuses to allow me to see my grandson. He said he was moving to Mississippi, not true.
 


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