A Place to Call Home

We all have a place we call home. We walk through the doors and are instantly greeted with the noises of cooking, small brothers and sisters playing on the stairs and the sound of a relative watching TV in a distant room. This place smells like home too; a smell that excites the olfactory to recall fond and distinct memories of childhood and family. But for me, this Rockwellian concept came to a grinding halt recently as I now find myself "homeless."

To many the word homeless brings up images of destitute men and women, scraping by on coins discarded by kind souls who are more fortunate. But for me this is not the case. Recently my wife moved from the house we shared in East Campus to Los Angeles, starting a new job, a new adventure and a new phase in her life. I, however, am left here to finish the semester and for the next two months am living with my parents. They were kind enough to let their 28-year-old son move back… home.

There is that word again. I haven't lived with my parents since I was 20, nor did I ever plan to. Though I am living in the house I spent most of my formative years, sleeping on the bed I slept on in my final years of high school and post graduate years, I feel a sense of disconnect and estrangement. The house no longer smells like me, but has an odor that is distinctly familiar, but not correct. This is not my home.

My home is in a city in which I have never lived. My home is in an apartment that may as well be as sterile as a doctor's office, the paint on the walls barely dry. What I have come to realize, after spending spring break in a place that I was still "just visiting," is that my home is not a place at all. When I used to consider Monterey to be my home, I now see it for what, no who it really is. My home is where my wife is.

The concept of home is more than a physical place to me. The adage "Home is where the heart is" has never been so true as it is to me now. And I know this is true for many people. Home may be a country from which one emigrated, or in some cases escaped. Home may be a place and city in a far away land, where one's only knowledge comes from the stories mom or dad has emphatically told. Home may be the opposite in every detail to that Rockwellian picture I described earlier.

Although our homes may differ in almost every detail, the idea of having a place to call home is important. It gives us a sense of roots, a firm ground to own. Without this grounding we loose sight of a part of us, spiraling into chaos, however brief. This is especially true for international students, travelers and immigrants.

So as we all have recently come from or back to our homes, understand what it is you hold dear. For me, home isn't just a place anymore; home isn't where my heart is, it's where her heart is.