Finding Home…
“A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.”
This note was in a fortune cookie I got the other day. I’m not usually one to take anything more than humor from fortune cookie scrolls, but this one stuck with me. I kept this particular little piece of waxed paper and it currently resides in my wallet.
I don’t know exactly what it is that I’m after, but this idea has been repeating in my mind since then.
I do know that one problem I’ve consistently had is feeling like I don’t have a “home”. It’s not easy for me to form attachment to anything or anyone, and I sometimes notice this acutely. My house is where I live, and I’ve done things to make it comfortable, but it is difficult for me to understand that it is home. I like it, and it’s a good place to go at the end of a day, but is it my home?
When I think of this intuitively, using only the yes/no feeling from my gut, I believe that I have found a place to call home. A home is supposed to be a place of love. Well, I have love in that house when my children are there. When they aren’t, it’s usually just me and my dog hanging out. It is comfortable. I feel safe there. I feel like it’s “mine”. Most importantly, I feel peaceful. I can putter around in my skivvies, work on whatever I feel like working on, or just be lazy and nap away a day… I feel like it’s the one place I can relax completely.
So, yes, I do have a home. Strangely, it wasn’t until I was on my own that I felt like it was “home” – probably because I don’t have to share with another adult.
I went on a small trip a few months ago and visited a town that would have, if I’d made a different set of choices, become “home”. It felt off-kilter to me. I didn’t like it very much overall. The people weren’t very friendly, the town itself was built in a convoluted manner, and I just felt weird being there… I can’t imagine ever feeling settled into and comfortable in that town. Oddly, when I went outside of the town proper, I felt like it was one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen – the rural community in the area was vibrant and kind and helpful. It was almost surreal how much those places I visited were like the farm communities I’ve seen on television programs, those places I’ve always longed to be a part of. I could see myself as a farmer out there, if life took me that way. That is an agreeable thought to me.
Still, when I made my way back to my current city of residence, I had a distinct feeling of “coming home”. I felt relief and comfort and a warm pleasure that I’d get to sleep in my own bed and snuggle with my sweetheart-ed little humans and eat a hot home-cooked meal.
I am realizing now that one of the reasons I’ve always wanted to be a farmer is that I’ve always wanted that feeling of community and commonality and confidence that comes from relying only on self for one’s livelihood but being able to count on neighbors in times of need. When I think of “having a farm”, I get a fuzzy warm feeling and I imagine myself in a homemade dress and big boots, collecting eggs while I call out to a farmhand to come in for breakfast… that really makes me happy to think of. The best part of that ideal is that the farm is my home, and my life is contained there – I wouldn’t need to leave every day for a “real job”, because my job would be to keep everything running at home so that we’d survive another year without an outside income.
But, I also know it is a dream. I am aware that idealized life is only something I can come to with time and hard work. I feel some sadness that it seems like a difficult task, something that feels like it should be so easy to achieve. Mostly, I feel like I’m spending too much time working backward – trying to unravel the things I gagged and bound myself with while trying to please other people. That’s going to take more time than I want to admit, and that feeling of uneasiness and hopelessness will keep me from realizing my dreams if I let it.
I recognize the logical thought that I may not ever be self-sustained. But, my gut tells me I will be. I don’t actually have any doubt about it in my heart. Maybe it won’t be anytime soon… but it will be sometime.
And so, since I have love and I have dreams, I really do have a home. I will bring this feeling of home with me as I move through my dreams, making them come true. Because home is in my heart; the love and dreams are always within me. Sometimes they just need a safe place to be cared for and gently coaxed into reality as newborn destinies.
I see it now: my true loves and dreams are really just versions of Home.