It was quite interesting to me that although many ENGL 470 bloggers announced they found it difficult to describe home and what it means to them, there are many similarities in our descriptions of home and the value it holds.

For many, home is something intangible, having more to do with internal feelings than external objects or land. It’s something that is created by memories, experiences, and emotions. Memories of “childhood, friendship, and adventure,” as Madelaine Walker says, were common in these short stories, provoking a sense of nostalgia for good or better times. Sometimes these memories are triggered by a physical space (the house) or object (household items), or even smells and sounds. We attribute these good memories to the place where they occurred, the house. These memories give meaning and value to the house, thus making it home. Then there are experiences, things that happened in the past which connect us to our homes, or pull us away from them. The experience of growing up, losing a loved one or seeing them sick can make home more meaningful. It can also diminish one’s sense of home if the experience was negative. Finally, emotions were a common theme in each blog. Feelings of belonging, happiness, contentment, security, love, and laughter gave home meaning for many. Memories, emotions, and experiences an help us explain the intangible idea of home.

Of course, not everyone considered home to be something that is intangible. Many stories talked about specific people that made a house into a home. “Home is wherever I’m with you,” as the song goes. Most often these people were direct family members such as parents and siblings, but also boyfriends, girlfriends, and friends.

One thing I did notice is that very few, if any people thought of home as being directly tied into the land. I don’t think anyone talked about physical ownership or physical space as home. As we learned in unit 2, the relationship between home and land is much more complex, valued, and important in First Nations culture, but we do not seem to have stories about land in the same way that First Nations cultures do.

Another similarity between our stories about home is the notion that home can change and evolve. Some storytellers grew to feel that their new homeland was really home, more so than the place they left behind. Many made their own homes as adults, separate from the homes of their parents that were once home to them as children. That brings us to another similarity, that home is something you can create for yourself. Most of the storytellers seemed to agree that we can make homes for ourselves and if we uproot we can create a new home. This illustrates my previous point that home is not so much tied to land for us as it is tied to emotions and feelings of safety, comfort, etc.

Many bloggers felt that home was a place of shared values. For one blogger, it was the familiarity of language that made them identify with Canada as home. And although several people pointed out the cliché that is “home is where the heart is,” it succinctly describes the most common idea of home that we as students seem to share, that home is not a physical space but rather something you feel.

Works Cited