What is home?
Is it a structure? Is home the building you live in now, or one you lived in at another time in your life?
Is it what you put into the structure, in the individual rooms? Does being surrounded by lovingly worn objects passed down to you from your parents or grandparents give you a sense of stability? Maybe something your father gave your mother in a moment of celebration, or gifts or art children made with small hands and gave you as they were growing up. Or maybe special books you've thumbed time and again, wearing the edges to threads?
Is home a place? The way the light bounces off water, or how it is filtered through leaves in a certain landscape? Does waking up to mountains on the horizon, or hearing a car pull onto your gravel driveway make you feel at home? Do you prefer a cityscape with crowds, lights and street noises?
Is
home family, or certain loved ones? (Ohh, I see we need a new family picture with
Brian included. This one was taken in 2005 by my nephew Mark -
Ginnie's son - on the frozen lake. That's our family cottage to the left of Peter's head in the photo, up on the hill. That place really feels like home to me, because of all the family memories. Also, it is the closest we have to a homestead since my parents passed away, and our big extended family still gathers there twice a year.)
And how do you know it's home? Is it a feeling of warmth in a place that puts you at ease with yourself more than anywhere else?
I have never felt more at home than here at the farm, where we have lived less than five years. Our children also seem to feel a sense of home here unlike any of the eleven (that's 11, yes, 10 + 1) houses they've lived in, even though Lesley never lived here and Peter only lived here a few months in college. To answer my questions, I feel at home anywhere with my loving husband, and that grows stronger when the kids are home. I feel at home here at the farm because of the outdoor space - the way the trees are situated, the way the house windows face the land and old buildings, how the land slopes down to the meadow and woods, and the way the rustling poplar leaves in a strong wind are audible all the way to the house porch. I also feel at home with the heirlooms I grew up with, and seeing my children's art on the walls and Lesley's fabric projects draped on furniture.
If all this were taken from me, and I had to live with a minimum, I would hope for:
- a pen, a pad of paper, books on a wooden table, a comfortable chair, something beautiful to look at (art, photograph, fabric, a piece of pottery), something old that belonged to someone I love/d, and a view to the outdoors
I'd love to hear what makes you feel a sense of
home.
I wore the earrings Peter picked up for me in St. John, New Brunswick that Gwen made. Aren't they beautiful? They made me feel tres elegante, like when I was a little girl playing dress-up with bobby pins clipped together and dangling from my ears, only better.
