Philosophical: What is real "home(land)"?

[Trenchfriend]

I would always say, that to me "home(land)" is a place, where I can let fall myself in "the arms of trust". Or where I can relax, evertime I want to.

I wouldn't attach it on a special local place and "the arms of trust" mustn't be my biological family.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

So for you Trenchy, a home is a form of sanctuary, a haven where you can be yourself. I'm not sure what 'home' means to me. I used to have itchy feet & agreed with the sentiments in the song ' The Wanderin' Star ' ...." Home is made from coming from, for dreams of going to, which with any luck will never come true " but as I get older & the sunset gets further away, having an anchorage point is starting to have it's attractions even though the concept of 'home' still scares the crap outta me as it signifies you've 'settled down'...something I have great difficulty comming to terms with. I may do less roaming with my feet now but my mind is still a vagabond. Living alone or sharing your home with others isn't the same thing though, I can only truly relax & be myself when I'm alone but that doesn't necessarily have to be 'at home'.

 

[Tiki Tom]

At various times I have answered that question as follows:

• Nowhere and everywhere;
• Vienna (I've now been here longer than any other place in my adult life);
• Anyplace I write a book about.

 

[LizzieMaine]

As the corny old saying has it, "home is where the heart is." You know it where you get there. And it might very well be people and not a place.

My blood family has lived on the same block in the same town for over a hundred and twenty years. But when I go there to visit my mother, it doesn't seem like home at all -- because it no longer exists in the form that I knew it. The people who made it "home" are dead and gone, so now it's just a row of anonymous houses that don't mean anything to me anymore.

On the other hand, when I go to work, I'm not "going to work," I'm associating with a group of people who have become as close to me as if they were blood relatives. Because of that my stupid little office with no windows and junk piled up in every corner is as much "home" to me as any home ever was. But take away those people and it's just a stupid little office with no windows and junk piled up in every corner.

 

[Harp]

At various times I have answered that question as follows:

• Vienna (I've now been here longer than any other place in my adult life);

Thessalonikki, Greece is my second home after Chicago; and I would add Santa Anita racecourse.

 

[belfastboy]

I would always say, that to me "home(land)" is a place, where I can let fall myself in "the arms of trust". Or where I can relax, evertime I want to.

I wouldn't attach it on a special local place and "the arms of trust" mustn't be my biological family.

I agree with your perspective. For me "home" has always meant a soft place to land, a sanctuary/refuge. My wife and I travel but we have had a bricks and mortar home to return to. But the refuge part is not site specific as we recreate it wherever we are and whatever we are living in. It is a state of mind and very transportable.

 

[tonyb]

As the corny old saying has it, "home is where the heart is." You know it where you get there. And it might very well be people and not a place.

My blood family has lived on the same block in the same town for over a hundred and twenty years. But when I go there to visit my mother, it doesn't seem like home at all -- because it no longer exists in the form that I knew it. The people who made it "home" are dead and gone, so now it's just a row of anonymous houses that don't mean anything to me anymore.

On the other hand, when I go to work, I'm not "going to work," I'm associating with a group of people who have become as close to me as if they were blood relatives. Because of that my stupid little office with no windows and junk piled up in every corner is as much "home" to me as any home ever was. But take away those people and it's just a stupid little office with no windows and junk piled up in every corner.

Seventeen years and some months ago my dewy-eyed bride and I bought the house next door to the house my brother bought in 1975. I was quite familiar with the immediate neighborhood as I had spent much time there myself in years past and had many friends and associates there.

A few years later the missus and I moved about an hour away (employment opportunity) and rented the house out to her sister. We sold it year before last. I haven't lived there in more than a decade.

My brother died in late 2007. His widow joined him just yesterday (ovarian cancer, which has claimed several women of my acquaintance).

I don't know that I'll ever set foot on that block again. I'm not planning against it, but I'm not planning on it, either.

 

[belfastboy]

Seventeen years and some months ago my dewy-eyed bride and I bought the house next door to the house my brother bought in 1975. I was quite familiar with the immediate neighborhood as I had spent much time there myself in years past and had many friends and associates there.

A few years later the missus and I moved about an hour away (employment opportunity) and rented the house out to her sister. We sold it year before last. I haven't lived there in more than a decade.

My brother died in late 2007. His widow joined him just yesterday (ovarian cancer, which has claimed several women of my acquaintance).

I don't know that I'll ever set foot on that block again. I'm not planning against it, but I'm not planning on it, either.

It is interesting and I share your thoughts. I was born into a house, lived there til 17 and my Mom continued to live in that house for 64 years. She passed away last year and we sold the "family" home. I sold it with no twinge of emotion, remorse or any feeling at all. I have had occasion to drive past it twice in the last year and in a way surprised myself with the total absence of any emotion at all. It is just a pile of wood and stuff, perhaps the locus of memories (good and bad) but it is NOT my home, not my sanctuary merely a structure that housed me for a few years and a place that I visited to see Mom for all those years.

 

[Hurricane Jack]

To me whether I live there or not my home will always be the state, the land really, where my ancestors lived, sacrificed, bled & died for what they believed in & to make life for me & mine just a little bit better. And I will remember them especially tomorrow, on Thanksgiving.

Whenever I get rather melancholy I'm fond of the following quotes:

“A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of the earth, for the labours of men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference among the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and kindly acquaintance with all neighbors, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blood.”

"The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one's own homestead."

--George Eliot

 

[2jakes]

I would always say, that to me "home(land)" is a place, where I can let fall myself in "the arms of trust". Or where I can relax, evertime I want to.

I wouldn't attach it on a special local place and "the arms of trust" mustn't be my biological family.

I agree.
For me, it's not a place.
It's people.

You know who they are.

They're the folks that you can trust and relax
without them ever making you feel like....

"What's in it for me?"

 

[tonyb]

What with the recent passing of my sister-in-law, I am again reminded of the human impulse to leave a tangible legacy. For many of us, that means real estate -- a place where we lived and built something more durable than ourselves.

I've long felt that more than a hint of mortality denial is implicit in our Western notions of real property ownership. We may quickly rot away, but the land remains, as do the structures, provided subsequent stewards keep decent roofs on them and give 'em fresh coats of paint every now and then.

 

[belfastboy]

What with the recent passing of my sister-in-law, I am again reminded of the human impulse to leave a tangible legacy. For many of us, that means real estate -- a place where we lived and built something more durable than ourselves.

I've long felt that more than a hint of mortality denial is implicit in our Western notions of real property ownership. We may quickly rot away, but the land remains, as do the structures, provided subsequent stewards keep decent roofs on them and give 'em fresh coats of paint every now and then.

This was very true of my Mom. Raised in a dirt poor prairie family and surviving the depression, home ownership was a very big deal for her. The home was a symbol to her of having "risen above" her birth. She so very much wanted the house to be passed down through the generations as her gift and legacy. But I and my siblings all owned our own and truth be told it was a very modest 1940's suburban home not well suited to our modern tastes. We sold it, it still stands but I doubt for much longer. I hold no pretense of legacy. My wife and I childless by choice and not connected to much of an extended family my legacy is not likely to extend much passed a few short days after the will is read and I am okay with that.....after all I won't be present for it anyway!

 

[2jakes]

What with the recent passing of my sister-in-law, I am again reminded of the human impulse to leave a tangible legacy. For many of us, that means real estate -- a place where we lived and built something more durable than ourselves.

I've long felt that more than a hint of mortality denial is implicit in our Western notions of real property ownership. We may quickly rot away, but the land remains, as do the structures, provided subsequent stewards keep decent roofs on them and give 'em fresh coats of paint every now and then.

My condolences for your loss.

With regards to places where we lived.
I've noticed that although the land remains, sometimes it changes 100%.
Where I grew up with my grandmother.
Not only are the streets changed to one way only and paved.
The nearby creek is gone. The earth has eroded so
that it's an empty cavern and impossible to walk. There's no more
trees or wildlife.
The way it used to be now exists only in my memory.

 

[tonyb]

This was very true of my Mom. Raised in a dirt poor prairie family and surviving the depression, home ownership was a very big deal for her. The home was a symbol to her of having "risen above" her birth. She so very much wanted the house to be passed down through the generations as her gift and legacy. But I and my siblings all owned our own and truth be told it was a very modest 1940's suburban home not well suited to our modern tastes. We sold it, it still stands but I doubt for much longer. I hold no pretense of legacy. My wife and I childless by choice and not connected to much of an extended family my legacy is not likely to extend much passed a few short days after the will is read and I am okay with that.....after all I won't be present for it anyway!

I trust that you and your fellow survivors came away with a chunk of change, though.

I'd love to have my 82-year-old mom's (today is her birthday, coincidentally) humble little 1950s house, which she and the since departed husband of hers bought about 20 years ago.

Alas, she lives in a resort community and the view property of hers is zoned multiple. I have two surviving siblings. Provided the three of us survive her (far from a sure bet, that), the likelihood is that we would sell the place to a developer. I don't know how much equity she has in the place, and, frankly, I'd rather not know. I heard some grumbling a few years ago about her scalawag of a husband taking some money out of the property, grumbling which I largely disregarded, seeing how I couldn't do anything about it anyway.

 

[tonyb]

My condolences for your loss.

With regards to places where we lived.
I've noticed that although the land remains, sometimes it changes 100%.
Where I grew up with my grandmother.
Not only are the streets changed to one way only and paved.
The nearby creek is gone. The earth has eroded so
that it's an empty cavern and impossible to walk. There's no more
trees or wildlife.
The way it used to be now exists only in my memory.

Hence our attraction to artifacts. In a world of constant change, it's good to hold onto something that hasn't changed.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What with the recent passing of my sister-in-law, I am again reminded of the human impulse to leave a tangible legacy. For many of us, that means real estate -- a place where we lived and built something more durable than ourselves.

I've long felt that more than a hint of mortality denial is implicit in our Western notions of real property ownership. We may quickly rot away, but the land remains, as do the structures, provided subsequent stewards keep decent roofs on them and give 'em fresh coats of paint every now and then.

"One generation goeth and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever."

I often think about the people who lived in my house before I came along -- the place was occupied from 1937 to 1982 by a lobsterman and his wife and their talking parrot. My neighbor across the street still remembers the parrot, which had a forceful personality and a sailor-like vocabulary. I never knew them, they never had any kids other than the parrot, but every once and again I'll find some little bit or piece of their time here and wonder what they were like. Why did they pick that particular wallpaper pattern? Did they lay that linoleum upstairs themselves? Did they bury the parrot in the backyard like I buried a cat? Did they plant those phlox that come up every spring?

I don't know what I'll leave behind here of any permanence. I planted two poplar trees the year I moved in here, but had to chop one down last year, and the other one is dying. I fear my legacy will be the pile of dust, cat hair, loose pennies, bottle caps, and assorted debris piled out by the junkyard fence where I empty my vacuum cleaner bag.

 

[MisterGrey]

Oklahoma has always held a great deal of sentimentality for me; I've spent more of my life in Missouri and Texas, but the years I spent there (between 10 and 19) were some of the most important of my life and the relationships I formed during that time have been some of the most influential and long-lasting. I try to go back for at least a week every year and was able to spend the summer there in 2009, which again proved to be a very influential and special period for me.

That said, though, I've never felt more at peace, more at home, and more of a sense of belonging and "home" than the times I've gone to England. Even though my closest link to the country is some great-grand parent I never met, I've never felt the "completeness" of self that I have during my time there, and I've never had the sort of natural rapport with individuals like I have there. Though it's many years away, I would ideally like to retire there one day, or at least have a more permanent attachment to it than bi-yearly business trips.

 

[2jakes]

Hence our attraction to artifacts. In a world of constant change, it's good to hold onto something that hasn't changed.

I never gave it much thought before.
But it’s true.
I reckon that’s why I cling to bikes, trucks & leather jackets from the past.

Last night looking for a part for my ‘50s Schwinn,
I came across my dad’s WW2 cap.
This might sound weird, but I could smell the scent of him on that thing.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I'm a fourth generation Chicagoan, and my son is the fifth generation. One of my great grandfathers was a Teamster (when they actually drove a team of horses) who was pressed into service to remove bodies from the Iroquois Theater fire of 1903. My grandfather helped to dig the State Street subway as part of a WPA project. The stories and anecdotes are too numerous to list here, but suffice it to say that this old worn slattern of a city, even when she drives me to aggravation. I'll be moving to the Pacific Northwest in a few years when my wife retires, but I fully expect to be riding that Empire Builder between Portland and here at least once a year to visit.

 

[tonyb]

I'm a fourth generation Chicagoan, and my son is the fifth generation. One of my great grandfathers was a Teamster (when they actually drove a team of horses) who was pressed into service to remove bodies from the Iroquois Theater fire of 1903. My grandfather helped to dig the State Street subway as part of a WPA project. The stories and anecdotes are too numerous to list here, but suffice it to say that this old worn slattern of a city, even when she drives me to aggravation. I'll be moving to the Pacific Northwest in a few years when my wife retires, but I fully expect to be riding that Empire Builder between Portland and here at least once a year to visit.

Where in the PNW?