A lot of weight placed on identifying one’s ‘home’. The notion of ‘home’ is unique, as It is not the same as being asked where you’re from, or where you live. A home is not stagnant, as one grows up and changes, then subsequently their home will change as well. To me, home is a place I feel surrounded by family and love. A place where I grew up, learned and experienced new things, and where I am not afraid to be myself.
I grew up in Toronto as a relatively active member of the Jewish community. I attended 14 years of Jewish education, had a Bat Mitzvah, went to youth group events, and celebrated the holidays with my immediate and extended family. However, in my later years of high school, I learned more in depth about the religion and I naturally started questioning a lot of the values and rules I grew up to immediately follow. Additionally, once my brothers had both moved out, and my parents started traveling a lot more for work I was home alone a lot by grade 12.
Since I have moved to Vancouver I have felt more and more disconnected to my childhood home. I am living a secular life in Vancouver detaching me from my religious upbringing, as well between school and summer commitments, I am actually living in my parents home for about a total of three weeks a year. With this being said, I have often started referring to my apartment in Vancouver as my home. However, even though over my past three years living here I have accumulated enough cards, art work, and school projects, it is yet to feel like a true home. Though I have grown up a lot in this house and I have learned a lot from new experiences, this is not my home. As I mentioned, a home is a place you feel surrounded by family and love — which I do not in my small studio apartment.
The final place which I have often always seen as ‘home’ is my summer camp, Wapomeo. I started attending the camp when I was seven years old, and is the place I feel most surround by love from family and friends. It is the place where I have most grown up having experienced a significant amount of first in my life. It was there I had made my first best friend, learned to cook, to build a fire, had my first period, my first kiss, experienced my first loss, and my first heart break. Wapomeo was my home for 15 years as this is the first summer that I will not be going.
When asked to tell a story that describes my sense of home I’m conflicted. I wonder if the right story to tell is me arriving home on Fridays from school to the smell of freshly made chicken, or early Saturday morning hockey games, where afterwards I would want to buy a Liptons cup-a-soup instead of the more normal red or blue gatorade. Maybe I should be telling stories of my friends and I pulling all nighters trying to finish projects and build models. Like the one time we were making a cantilever from bending plywood by soaking it in my tub, shaping it with coffee table books, and drying it with hair blow dryers till we accidentally blew my entire apartments fuse. Or maybe the truest collection of stories of home are from my 36, 42 or 50 days canoe trips. About making life long friends, building new skills, winning competitions or accomplishing decade long goals.
Right now, I am not sure where my home is, and thats okay. My home is not my parents home, which feels more and more foreign every trip to Toronto. It is not my university apartment, nor is it the summer camp I no longer attend. Being in university allows one to not have a home, as homes ground you and disable you from moving, and growing and changing — to me the main goals of ones young adulthood. My sense of home is thinking of these places and imagining what the next stages of my life may include. One day I will have a home again, and maybe I will continue making chicken soup, playing hockey, and even going back to camp, but for now its just me trying to figure the rest of it out.
Thanks for reading!