After reading a bunch of stories about home, one of the similarities that stood out to me was that most of them focussed on a time in the past. For a lot of the writers, it was childhood. I think it’s natural for one’s thoughts to gravitate toward a time when the anxiety of adult life wasn’t introduced to them yet, but I don’t think that the theme of most of these idea’s of home is necessarily childhood itself. Rather, I think “the past” in general is more important to people’s idea of home.
For most, I think home is really only seen in retrospect. A lot of us have moved out of our family homes in recent years, and maybe we are finally starting to really ask ourselves about home now that we’re not there. When I was a kid living at my parents house in Edmonton, home was just somewhere you went when the sun went down. Even when I went on vacation, “homesickness” was never an issue for me. Home was so constant for me that I never got the chance to really think about what it would be like without it.
I think the other glaring similarity about thie writer’s notion of home is their confusion about it. They know they feel attached to something in their past, but they don’t know why. I have the same feeling when I think about my years growing up. What makes it so desirable for me mentally? How come I have a longing to go back there?
🙂