On Sunday, we finally had the belated BBQ/baby shower for my friend Christy who delivered Baby G at 34 weeks after a month-long stay in the hospital due to complications. I'm still very close with my old crew from childhood - we all keep in touch regularly and try to get together as much as possible for showers, weddings, an annual Christmas party, and these days even the occasional funeral (sad but true fact of life the older you get). Not everyone was there for this event, but it was still great to see those who could make it. My friend Lil's parents let us host it at their house out on the lake and the weather was perfect. Spouses and children were invited as well. The men built a bonfire and stood around drinking their beer while my friends and I snacked on appetizers and watched Christy open gifts. And everyone fought over the two babies that were there (Baby G and Lil's four-month-old son BW). Besides being cute - they were nice and warm and snuggly!
We were trying to take a real picture but the light wasn't
cooperating,so we got this instead. We all agreed it turned
out more interesting as a silhouette anyway :)
Being 'home' got me thinking and reflecting on what 'home' really means. And I realized something. I know longer think of my hometown as home anymore. For a long time, that wasn't the case. When I was 18, my parents took me to college, drove back home, packed up the house I'd grown up in, and literally moved halfway across the country to Boston. Less than a week after I moved into my freshman dorm, the only 'home' I'd ever known was gone. At least, in a physical sense it was gone. But I continued to consider the town as a whole to be home. Both sets of grandparents and various and sundry members of my extended families still lived there. My friends, and their parents, still lived there. It was where I went most of the time for weekends away from college, and at least part of every school break was spent at one or the other of my grandparents' houses.
It was weird to not think of my parents' house as home. But honestly, it wasn't. Boston was fine and all, and they lived there for 5 or 6 years, but it was never 'home' to me. It did become home for my brother, who still resides in that area. But he was younger, in high school still when they moved. Meanwhile, my parents have moved twice more since Boston. I still visit them at least once a year, but I don't call it 'going home.' After college, my friend B and I got an apartment together in the suburbs. We were young and broke and most of our furniture came from hand-me-downs or Ikea. We had a fantastic little apartment in a cozy residential complex, and we would watch Friends reruns late and night as we ate our ramen noodle soup and talked about the future. I have great memories of living there. But it never quite felt like home...
When Paul and I first looked at our house, I knew it would eventually be home. It just felt like home to me. And it certainly has been our home, for the last 4 years. We've furnished it (sometimes even with REAL furniture we bought brand new ourselves!) and we are gradually renovating the parts of it that we want to change. We have our cats and dogs and a yard with gardens and flower beds. We like to host BBQs in the summer and have an annual New Years' brunch every January. It is definitely a home. But home to me is more than just a house.
The home I grew up in included the town around my house, the college across the street where my dad (and Papa) worked, the little old lady neighbors who fed my brother and I cookies, the kids my age I knew from preschool through high school, our church which was just down the block. It was a small town, and everyone knew everyone. When I was 18, it felt suffocating. I had to get out, which is why I broke family tradition and chose a college out of town that no one in my family had ever attended (or worked for). I wanted to be my own person and make my own first impressions that were not rooted in being so-and-so's daughter/granddaughter/cousin/neighbor/babysitter/swim instructor. What I didn't know at 18 was that in doing so, in breaking away from my physical home, I was also losing that sense of belonging somewhere. At the time, I was fine with it.
But over the years, I've realized that I'm still that same small-town girl who craves the social aspects of home. I work in the city and I love having access to all that the city offers. But I'm not a city girl. And even the suburb I lived in with B was too much, too big, too crowded, to unfamiliar. We live in Paul's hometown now, which is even smaller than the town I grew up in. When we bought the house, we already knew 3 out of our 5 immediate neighbors. When something goes wrong and Paul is on shift, I can call Dale from across the street, or my father-in-law who is just 5 minutes down the road. When we're working in our yard or walking the dogs, everyone driving by waves and some stop to chat. Just this weekend, one of my neighbors called to borrow an ingredient for baking! We're part of a church in town, and Paul is on the volunteer fire department along with some neighbors and some from the church. I can go to a town event, like their annual festival which was just a couple weekends ago, and I know people. I belong again. I'm home.
No comments:
Post a Comment