Echoes and silence, patience and grace
All of these moments I’ll never replace
No fear of my heart, absence of faith
And all I want is to be home
– Dave Grohl
Earlier this week, for complicated reasons to do with Himself’s work, I found myself staying at my parents house. As I woke up in the room that was my brother’s childhood bedroom, I started to think about home. And what home means.
A week or two ago Catherine wrote about what home meant to her. In a comment to that post I said that I felt I’d moved around too much to really call anywhere “home” anymore. That home was somewhere in my heart .
My parents’ house is not my childhood home. I was 18 and either in a disastrous period at culinary school or Australia when they moved there. My room is sweet and tiny and has a little sink in the corner but it is not “my room”. That is in another house, in another part of Cambridge, hopefully being enjoyed by another angsty teenager with dodgy taste in music.
While I was studying for my Masters degree I lived with my parents. It was brilliant of them to put me up for free and I had a lot of fun living there, but in many ways it was just another move, in a long series of moves throughout my 20s. I’ve lost count of how many houses and apartments I’ve lived in. I’ve never felt rooted anywhere. One of my biggest problems is my inability to stay grounded.
I’m more settled since I’ve met Himself (although having said that I believe we’ve moved four times in the four years we’ve been together) and of course the cats need a roof over their heads. But I still have difficulty telling you what “home” means to me. Sometimes it’s this big comfy purple chair from whence I type my blog each day. Sometimes it’s in bed with a good book. Sometimes it’s on my yoga mat. But there is always a place in my heart, a place made of dreams and hopes and memories, a place that remains rose-tinted, where the sun always shines, that is my home. Bricks and mortar pale into insignificance compared to this.
Where is “home” for you?
