Last summer I traveled “up north” after recently relocating to Florida. I had a scheduled doctor’s appointment, and combined it with visits to friends and family, people I no longer get to see on a regular basis and who really know me. Having moved 3 times in 3 years, I had lost a connection to a place I could call “home”. As I drove through the rolling hills of north Jersey (some might call the setting bucolic), I felt a stirring I could only describe as “coming home”. I had spent most of my life there, from high school through adulthood, and it’s the place I identify when someone asks where I’m from.

I find that as I get older moving becomes more challenging; it’s no longer an adventure or an opportunity to explore new places. It seems to be more of an inconvenience, more exhausting. Of course much of that depends on perspective, which also seems to change as I age. When our family had the opportunity to move to Colorado back in 2004 it was exciting. There was a lot of apprehension, of course, about moving our household across the country where we knew no one and had not spent more than a few days house hunting. The first year there I admit I was homesick for the east coast way of life that had been my comfort zone for over 40 years. But we moved as a family, with all 3 of our children. I didn’t work the first year we were there, and really tried to create a “home”. We got connected in a church, and involved in school activities and sports. After living there for 6 years it had really become home.

We returned to the northeast after a visit with my parents revealed they were getting less able to be independent; not wanting to miss out on what might be their final years, we began plans to move back “home”. Home had become synonymous with family. The timing seemed right, as our middle child was getting ready to graduate from high school. Unfortunately, my mother passed away unexpectedly just a few months before our move, and the move took on an entirely new meaning.

We moved back into the same lake community which we had lived in before going out west, expecting it to still give that sense of comfort and familiarity; however, a lot had changed in the time we were gone and it no longer felt like “home”. Even the church we had been a part of was vastly different and no longer provided the spiritual safety net we depended on in challenging times. Sure, we still had some close friends and family nearby, and we did our best to get involved in community and to make our house a “home”. But expecting it to be the way it had been seemed to create a bit of a blindspot.

There are multitudes of articles and discussions on the idea of home. In an article in Psychology Today dated 11/4/21, Roni Beth Tower, Ph.D., wrote an extensive commentary on “The Meaning of Home”, addressing in part the changes to the idea of “home” that came about as a result of the world wide pandemic. She spoke about different aspects of home, one of which was referred to as “attachment of memory”. In citing an earlier article on attachment theory, she wrote: “home includes primary locations where early memories and their emotions result in attachment scripts and their consequences. A sense of belonging securely or less so persists into adulthood or until changes in unconscious expectations make room for revised understanding” (Simpson, J.A. & Rholes, W.S. (1998) Attachment Theory and Close Relationships, N.Y., Guilford Press). Tower also issued a caveat about the meaning of home- it does not always signify a “happy place”. She mentioned an installment at the Whitney Museum in Connecticut in 1986-1987 which showed the “dark side of home”, stating that “reality often fails to match a desire or wish”.

So I wonder- is my searching for a sense of “home” just wishful thinking? Perhaps I have been relying on those “attachment scripts” to fulfill that inner desire to find comfort in a home. I made that annual trip “up north” again about a month ago. I drove through those same rolling hills and yet I was not filled with the sense of coming home that I had felt in the past. I did, however, spend some precious although brief time with family- helping my youngest pack up his apartment to prepare a move to his new home; dinner and a nostalgic ice cream date with my daughter; time spent with each of my siblings; coffee in two different states with dear friends. (For me, coffee often represents home).

Returning to Florida (where I now live with my husband, so we call it “home”), I reflected on that trip as well as on the relationships I have built here in the last 18 months, and have come up with a different idea of home- the idea that it’s not so much a physical place or environment, but it’s made up of those experiences and relationships, constantly changing as my expectations change.

Plenty of well known authors have quipped about home: T.S. Eliot said “Home is where one starts from”; Robert Frost, possibly tongue in cheek, said that “Home is the place that, when you go there, they have to let you in”; I think my favorite one, though, comes from Aleksander Hemon, author of The Lazarus Project- “Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there”.

I don’t know why it’s taken me a year to complete this post; it’s not as if the concept is that deep that it requires extensive research. I think it’s just taken a while for my expectations of home to line up with the realities of my changing environment- not just physically but emotionally and spiritually as well. Perhaps all this overthinking about “home” has led me to miss out on the gifts right in front of me these past few years.

Proverbs 24:3-4 says “By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; by knowledge the rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures” (NIV). Hopefully I have gained some wisdom in my 6+ decades of life, and can use that wisdom to build a home, wherever I am; I try each day to show love and understanding instead of my go-to criticism or cynicism that the harsh world outside my home seems to demand; and those “rare and beautiful treasures”? Those are easy to identify- the smell of sauce and meatballs on a Sunday afternoon or pies on Thanksgiving; watching our kids create their own “Christmas pizzas” for nearly 20 years; family cornhole tournaments in my sister’s yard or preparing holiday meals together; sharing a good cup of coffee with friends around a dining room table.

And cherishing each of those treasures is what I’ve come to undestand is home for me. As Hemon says “Home is the memory palace of the soul”. For today, my heart is full.