Thursday
Sep272012
Home Is Quite Different Than House, And I'm Finally Home
Thursday, September 27, 2012 
We moved into our new home about a week-and-a-half ago. We're slowly getting it all unpacked and painting finished before I show it to you. Above is your sneak peak at a radiator!
I keep wanting to write about it, because it is exciting to have our first ever piece of real estate, and it is lovely to boot. We're now living in an apartment that was built in 1914 with all its gorgeous original windows and hardwood floors, which makes it so much easier to claim that all our aging, secondhand furniture is on purpose. I am seriously in love with this place. Yes, I have kissed its walls.
As is my usual style, though, I am having many feelings about this whole home thing, which requires much introspection and deep thinking and eating of dark chocolate with sea salt.
Sometime around the age of four, I lost my sense of home, or at least that is when I became aware of feeling like a visitor everywhere. Maybe it was because I was becoming conscious of my discomfort with my body, or maybe it was because we moved to a new house at that time and it interrupted my chi. I grew up in a stable home with relatively happy parents, but I was still somehow stuck with the keen awareness that all things were temporary and that I did not belong.
As an adult, it's likely that I have moved over ten times, I've had roommates and I've lived alone, and I've never had a home. I have been squatting on borrowed space. I let the dirt accumulate, I let the appliances deteriorate, and when I have had enough, I move on. Now, though, I am quite unexpectedly experiencing that feeling that I am sure is what everyone has been talking about when they say they feel "at home". I always caught the gist of that sentiment, but I never really knew the flavour. Now I do.
I had no reason to believe, no faith, that I would come to this place and discover this kind of animal comfort. I just thought it would be a place that I would treat better because it is an investment, but now I sweep the floors because I love this place. I sweep the floors because the Palinode lives here, and I love him. I sweep the floors because we are family here: the Palinode, the cats, the apartment, and I.
All of you with homes, or with the memory of homes, be thankful. Home is quite different than house, and we all have this sense. It's really a unique and incredible feeling. It's safety, it's calm, it's a nest for those I love, and it's liberating to have this space. There is a vigilance I have long held in my chest, an anxious watchfulness, because no place was mine. All places were merely borrowed or lent, and anything could be taken away, but that vigilance is mostly lifted here, aside from my normal fears of home invasion and fire.
And now I am here, home and wondering how long this feeling gets to hold out. Does it last? Can I fall out of it?
After 35 years of wandering, I have a physical space that is mine in the world, and this gratitude I feel makes up for all the time that I did not.
categorized in family & pets, general, personal history and tagged in childhood, condo, gratitude, home, past
family & pets, general, personal history and tagged in childhood, condo, gratitude, home, past 
Reader Comments (17)
I think that it will last. I am so, so happy for you.
The concept of home was one of the drivers behind my trip. I'm still sorting through it. I know when I lost my sense, too, and how important it is to me to get that back. The "...and then I move on" paragraph resonates uncomfortably, but truly, for me.
This is the most beautiful post. I'm in all kinds of love with this great change for you and Aidan and the cats.
"Brick & Wood, Morter & Plane, Labor's Love-a little Faith,You can see the structure taking form.Ancient tools,a New Design, taking Care,taking Time,we've seen so many houses fall before, We are building a house,growing Tall before our eyes,stone on stone,watch it rise,we are building a house with our hands,with our songs,may it stand as long as our lives." - Congratulations to you &the Palinode May the blessings of Home be Yours
Er, um, well ... nothing lasts forever ... not even "home" ... but why not let the state of home ownership make you feel that something is permanent and not going to change any time soon? What the heck! It's a great feeling; I remember my first home purchase. Lawd luv a duck, I was a-goin' to stay there forever! Never have to move again! So on, so forth. Moved three times since then, and each time I've believed I'd never have to do it again. Now I know I will indeed have to, if only into town someday, or into an old folks' home! But I am looking too far into the future, perhaps. It's hard to put down deep roots when you do that. So enjoy your new digs, especially not having to ask anyone's permission to paint or renovate or put a nail in the wall. Congratulations, and I'm looking forward to seeing the photos.
Welcome Home! I think it will stick, the feeling of home, that is. Our first home was a cozy, little place. Your post brought me back there. Beautiful!
I'm a military brat who finally found "home" in Florida until I moved to Oklahoma a few months ago. I'm learning that yes, maybe "home" does stay with you for a long time. At least I'm happy to be in a new city and still able to call Florida my home. I never had that until I left.
Click your heels together. There's no place like home...Enjoy it!
Home truly is a special feeling.
I think "home" is a feeling that you carry within yourself and when it recognizes its place, makes itself known. You have recognized your place. It's your home.
Bill Bryson wrote a really good book about these dwellings we call home. It made me look at my home a bit differently- but in a good way.
I'm a military brat too. Home is something I struggle with all the time. At 13 we stopped moving around but we didn't know we had stopped moving around until I graduated high school. The threat of moving loomed over us all the time. Before that we lived in Germany and moved every January for three years. Pennsylvania from birth to 5, Alabama from 5 to 8, Germany from 8 to 12, Alabama 12 through 23 (I think).
I say that Alabama is where I grew up but it's not home. Pennsylvania is where my roots started (my whole family lives there except my parents and me), but it's not home either. I tried moving back there when I was 23 but it didn't work out. So we moved to Florida. I've been here since 2001. But it's not home either.
My husband and I squatted too. That paragraph about letting the appliances go and letting the dust build up is entirely too true. Home, for me, isn't about the place I live in but where I am.
The first time we drove into Savannah, GA. historic district I knew I was home. We hadn't even gotten out of the car, I was just peering through windows but this sense of HOME flooded through me I knew that that is where I belonged. I don't know why. I've never been there before. Maybe it's a past life thing or that it is a city of artists and diversity and farmer's markets and Marc Jacobs store across the street from Goodwill on Broughton.
Whatever it is I know that I need to be there. It's where I belong.
You really need to bask in this. Luxuriate in this. Nest, baby, nest. It's a great feeling.
We've been in our home for eleven years and I never, ever, ever want to leave.
So happy you've found your home, too.
Steam heat FTW! Sorry, I have a fondness for 100 year old steam systems and the mostly lost knowledge it took to design them.
I've had so many homes that I can't even count them all. I'm sitting here late on a Saturday night surrounded by boxes preparing to move to yet another home on Monday. New country, new home, this time an apartment. I don't own it, but I shall make it mine. Felicitations to you and the lovely Palinode. Savour that flavour sister.
This was a glorious piece of writing. Home is so different to a house, and how lovely that this house has been 'homed' by someone who truly appreciates all its goodness.
I can relate to your nomadic feelings. I think about home often - in fact it's an annoying relentless recurring theme in my life (and writing). I am so happy for you, and I so enjoyed reading your beautifully expressed words about this.
I grew up in one house, I raised my children in one apartment and then one house. Then I divorced. Then I remarried. I married someone who said he liked to move almost every year. So, I made good on my lifelong threat to leave town.
We've been leaving ever since. But, we've also been arriving ... and almost always it feels temporary, "for a year or two". But still, somehow, each place has become home. And almost every place has been difficult to leave.
There are some places tho ... when I walked in, I just knew ... baring all else ... I could easily stay for many years.
To me, it seems places have temperaments and personalities ... and some just open up and wrap me up and immediately invite me to love them :) The last place we lived in NY not only loved me but gave me gifts every day. An excellent, ever interesting view, pleasing sounds, a long-standing & respected heritage, etc :)
Oh, and it has absolutely nothing to do with ownership. We haven't owned since we moved the first time (9 yrs ago?) and I'm not overly sure I want to own again anytime soon.
Congratulations on finding a wonderful nesting spot :)
When you were going through all the angst, misgivings and sturm und drang before you moved, this is exactly what I/we wanted to tell you was ahead for you, Darlin'! You just was not listening, LOL, but all is well now. Micaela said it best when she said "Nest, baby, nest." Those blissful "I'm HOME!" feelings are like honeymoon feelings - they'll last as long as you want and will them to! It isn't just "puppy love" when you kiss walls!
When I was in Georgia pining for Oceanside (Cali) for 12 seemingly-interminable years I bought a little wall plaque that says "Take a deep breath - you're home now". I vowed not to hang it anywhere but here so here it hangs. I don't own the place I live in and I never expect to be able to again as long as I live here, but for me the blue Pacific Ocean is home and all I need is to see it, hear it and smell it every day for the rest of my life and I'll be just fine. Happy settling in, you adorable woman, and do give the Palinode and the cats hugs and kisses for me ♥