After reading through the amazing posts about my classmates’ feelings and interpretations on home, I found that many of us share similar themes. Themes of family, of childhood and nostalgia, of land and country and place. Mostly though, I see a group of people trying to define what home is, and the strangeness of the transition of moving from collective home to personal home.
The connection between home and childhood seems to be very strong for most of us, and I think this transitional period of defining our own “homes” comes from the fact that our generation (mostly millennials) have lengthened the time period of how long we live at “home”. According to CBS, “the number of adults aged 23 to 37 staying or returning home to their parents has been steadily rising since 2000” (Sarah Min, “More millennials are living at home than at any other time this century”), indicating that perhaps a reason we see such a strong connection between childhood and home, is simply because we stay there longer. By the time my parents were my age, they had a mortgage and 1.5 kids. I have an apartment and 2 cats. Most of my friends, who are still finishing their degrees, lovingly call themselves “the basement dwellers”, living in their childhood bedrooms, or if lucky, the built-in suites in their parent’s homes.
We stay at home longer because we simply cannot afford to do otherwise, but I also think it’s important to acknowledge that we do so because we know it’s a safe place. I remember hearing my dad tell me that for his High School graduation gift, he received a suitcase and a suit. It was a reminder that he was independent now and supposed to go off into the world and make his own way. My Dida left home at fourteen to go to school and live in a boarding house. He had to learn fast what it meant to be independent, and his father, well he was left at fourteen with his older sister as his family travelled to another country, another continent, to build a better life for themselves, and escape the war.
I was one of those “Boomerang” Millennials. I left home and came back twice. Not once, did I feel like I had failed, or that I was lacking independence. My parents had worked hard to establish that home was always a place where I was safe and loved. Now, I have been able to build a life for myself. I have an apartment that I love, I live in a city that with breathtaking views of the mountains and water, and I have a community of people around me that have become my second family. Because my parents had provided my with such a strong sense of home, I am able to begin to redefine that place for myself, and I think that’s what is at the heart of most of our posts. Home isn’t just setting, it’s a feeling. Home is wherever we feel safe and loved and happy. We’re all learning how to build that place for ourselves, taking bits and pieces from our experiences along the way.
Works Cited
Min, Sarah. “More millennials are living at home than at any other time this century”, CBS News, 10 May 2019, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-millennials-are-living-at-home-than-at-any-other-time-this-century/
Sherman, Erik. “Why Millennials Boomerang Home: It’s Not Student Loans. It’s Worse”, Forbes, 11 Jan 2017. https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2017/01/11/why-millennials-boomerang-home-its-not-student-loans-its-worse/?sh=d3de5585d86d