Home, let me come home – home is wherever I’m with you.

– Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

When I was thirteen years old, my parents sat my baby brother and me down at the kitchen table and told us that we were moving to Vancouver. As a girl who had, up until that point, lived most of her young life in Seattle, and a freshly turned teenager, I was absolutely, and dramatically, devastated. I was convinced that my life would be in shambles, and I did not know what I would do without being able to see my friends every day, and go about the week regularly in the places that were familiar to me. At this point in time, my definition of home was completely wrapped up in the friends I saw on a daily basis, the house I grew up in, and the local places I frequented.

We moved in with my aunt and uncle, who had a huge house on an acreage in Langley. My parents enrolled us in a private school, and life went on. But every weekend, my mother, my brother, and I would pile our things into the minivan after school on Friday afternoon and make the trek all the way down to Seattle. You see, my father was still living in Seattle at the time because it was taking longer than expected to sell the house and the business. We would spend the weekend at home in Seattle, and I would see all of my friends and go to  church on Sundays, and then on Sunday evening after family dinner, we would make the drive back up across the border, to be in bed and ready for school the next morning. We did this for almost a year, until my father finally was able to tie up all the loose ends in Seattle, and we bought a house and moved in. During this transition, it almost felt like nothing had changed, except that I had the pleasure of making more friends at my new school, while still being able to see my old friends every weekend.

Once we had moved into our new house in Langley, I remember feeling incredibly sad. It was harder than I had expected to pack up all of my things and move out of the house I had grown up in. I think part of it is because every wall and door and crevice of that house held so many memories, and it was in these memories that I had formed my sense of home. Unpacking and getting settled into the new house felt strange and foreign, like I didn’t quite know if I belonged there. I remember feeling almost resentful, even though this brand new house had done nothing to wrong me, I had no desire to settle into it and make it my home. My mother always said that this was only a temporary situation, and we would most likely be moving again within the next few years, since the urgency of needing a place to live had outweighed her desire to take her time, and pick and choose and fall in love with a house. I took this small reassurance to heart, and eventually, we settled into a different kind of routine.

I went back to Seattle every summer to visit my friends. But as the years passed, my visits grew shorter and shorter, and I fell out of touch with some of the people I had thought I would have been friends with for a long time. I started building a life for myself here, and life in Seattle obviously continued on without me. If you had asked me back then where home was for me, I would have answered, “Seattle” without hesitation. But now, home to me is my family, my boyfriend, my dog, and our house in Langley that I love. My boyfriend and I have been talking a lot recently about moving out, and where we would want to live, and I have no doubt that even though that would be a big step for me and would take a period of adjustment, it would become home to me in no time, with the memories we would create as we continued through life together.

I think that the sense of “home” is a mixture of the people you surround yourself with, and the places you frequent together, because all the memories and the familiarity are what make you feel comfortable, and at home. It’s almost like how listening to a song brings you back to a specific place, or person, or time – I believe that places can do that, too. Creed, from The Office said it best: “No matter how you get there, or where you end up, human beings have this miraculous gift to make that place home.”

Works cited:

Beck, Julie. “The Psychology of Home: Why Where You Live Means So Much.” the Atlantic, 30 Dec. 2011, http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/the-psychology-of-home-why-where-you-live-means-so-much/249800/. Accessed 29 Sept. 2016.

Campbell, Troy. “The Office Finale’s ‘Miraculous’ Quote – The Scientific Truth Behind It.” The Huffington Post, 21 Jul. 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/troy-campbell/the-office-finales-miracu_b_3308146.html. Accessed 29 Sept. 2016.