We’re Going Home

“Safe... when I'm with you I feel so safe... like I'm home.” - Andrew Largeman in Garden State

Home is most definitely not a place. It’s a feeling. I think this quote from the film “Garden State” sums up most of what I think about home. For me being home is feeling safe and comfortable.

Home is often a group of people. This includes my family, of course, but also a small group of friends. Whether at one of their houses, in a car, or bumming around at Waterfront Park I feel like I’m at home. This has to do with the level of comfort. Being at home with someone means you can trust them, and they can trust you.

In looser terms home could be any place. In Ways of Knowing we’ve been talking a lot about feeling at home in nature, in the world, and finding home in your own mind. This is just as important as being at home with people. In nature you can feel like you belong there, just like the feeling of belonging with friends and family.

I’m going back home for Thanksgiving. I don’t know what I’ll feel like. I hope I still feel like I belong there. I think I am lucky because my room hasn’t been taken over by my brother, like a few other people. (Although he did threaten to knock out the wall separating our rooms and make it a “man-lounge,” (his words not mine) complete with dark wallpaper and leather chairs.) I look forward to seeing my family, my cats, and my friends. It will be like home again to go to the Christmas tree lighting the day after Thanksgiving for our annual tradition, although it will be a bigger group now that everyone has a date to bring with them. I am glad that our group is flexible like that; we can make our circle of home bigger.

I know there will be a time when my house doesn’t feel like home anymore. It might be when I stop coming home for every school break, when I move out for good, when I get married, or buy my own house. Although I know that will be a hard experience I’m glad that I know that I will always be home with the people I love.

More Garden State:
Andrew: You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone.
Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
Andrew: You'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for you kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is: A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.


edit: so Noel and I used the same quote.... we are just awesome like that.