Connecting With the Idea of Home

What home used to be, for me, & what it is now.

I never connected with the “going home” vibe. I would say a version of the words: passing through my hometown this weekend; visiting where I grew up for the day. But the phrase I’m heading home for the weekend is not something I could ever actually say.

Once I left home at the age of eighteen, I didn’t find home again for some number of years. The closest I got to “going home” in the last twenty years was visiting my aunt and uncle at the family farm when I passed through, on my way to Chicago for a DMB show, or going to my Dad’s house for holidays and random visits before the pandemic (and before he died).

I landed at my Dad’s place for a bit, when I was barely twenty-one. It was really a home base — I came through every few days or weeks to do laundry, repack my bags, and head out again. At the time, I was traveling for work, and I really just needed somewhere to land in between that travel, and was grateful he provided me with it. But I didn’t feel like I really lived there. And that’s okay. His place has always been more of an escape for me. I loved going up for a couple days at a time after I moved back to the city, to get some nature and quiet, and enjoy time with him on the lake surrounded by woods. Now that he’s gone, it doesn’t feel the same — he was the heartbeat of that place. I’m grateful it’s still somewhere I can visit, though.

📸 The view at my Dad’s place. 🌲

The “home” I think of, from childhood, is the house outside of the small town where I grew up. Where I spent the first eighteen years of my life. It was a few miles outside the small dot on the map that held a population of around 900 people. A true “blink and you’ll miss it” place, hiding within the fields of corn and beans and dilapidated barns that make up the landscape in Northwestern Indiana. A sleepy little town; a nice quiet little place… that had nothing to offer me beyond the first seventy seasons of my life.

Thinking about my hometown and that house brings up a mess of feelings. Anger, nostalgia, sadness, fondness. That place saw me through a lot of things — from death to divorce, abuse to heartbreak, I find the weight of the bad memories hard to shake (maybe I’ll write about those one day), but I can’t overlook the great times. The holidays before my parents got divorced, the tail-end of the lake effect snow that gave us a canvas to build epic snow forts (and the snow days that followed). Listening to my Dad make music in the recording studio behind the house. The summer swims at the family farm in my aunt and uncle’s pool, running through the fields before and after harvests. The annual summer 4th of July festival. The trips to the library. The bonfires in the backyard. Riding my bike in town with friends, stopping at The Dairy Store for a turkey sandwich and a strawberry slushee. The endless summer days and nights between school years, spent with friends at Indiana Beach or at the drive in, or in our backyards and bedrooms. The dark nights with bright stars and the moon illuminating the landscape, where I slept with my windows open. If I close my eyes long enough, I can smell the late summer/early fall mornings — the yard drenched in dew, the morning sun glinting off each blade. The stillness and raw, natural beauty of it all.

I still picture that house so perfectly in my mind, just as I left it. The blue carpet in the main rooms. There was a quarter-sized hole in front of the elegant brick fireplace, from a stray ember that escaped the wood-burning stove. We covered it with a large throw pillow. The glass topped coffee, with its thick, light, oak-colored legs stamped firmly into the carpet. You could always tell if it was moved a millimeter away from its normal resting place. The wooden banister that took you up the stairs of the open great room — it swayed a bit because we took too many rides down it when we first moved back in after the renovation. The gorgeous greenery around the fireplace and living room, where it soaked up the natural light from the large windows on the southern wall. The stucco stone wall in the front room (turned into a computer room when I was in eighth grade). The nicotine stained walls throughout the house because no room was safe from the carcinogenic smoke. The wrap-around deck accessible from the kitchen, living room French doors, and back porch, where we kept wood stocked for the fireplace. The quiet summer days with the sounds of the interstate humming a mile away and a car passing on the highway.

I dream about that house, a lot. And it always leaves me feeling raw and somewhat sad, if I’m being honest. They are always kind of weird, too. They are vivid, like most of my dreams, but nothing makes sense. I’m living my current life but the setting is that house. Sometimes, it’s as if I inherited it. Other times, it’s like I never left and I’m dealing with the demons that haunt me from all those years ago. If I let myself explore the why behind these dreams, I could probably surmise that it’s because a lot of things there were left unresolved for me. I didn’t get closure in leaving that place — I thought I’d always get to come back, I guess. After all, the house had been in my family (my Dad’s side), for decades. But going back wasn’t an option, unfortunately. I didn’t get the opportunity to come collect belongings that I left behind, like old journals, books, clothing, and other artifacts of my youth. When I left for college, I was smart enough to at least take photos and some small trinkets, but given I was low on space due to dorm living, I didn’t take enough with me. I will always regret not doing so and I often wonder where those things landed.

When I find myself in the area, it feels weird to not stop. To not pull into the driveway and pop in through the kitchen door, kick my shoes off on the rug next to the laundry room. It also feels strange to drive through that area now because what was once vast farmland for as far as the eye could see, the landscape is full of windmills. At night, their blinking red lights look surreal. I sometimes wonder how I’d feel about them if I lived there still. The farms are still there, but now, so are the giant windmills, taking the endless country breeze and creating power, cutting into the view to the bright blue skies that once felt endless.

📸 What my hometown landscape looks like now.

I sometimes take a “drive” on Google Maps and see what my old property looks like now, and whew, what a mistake! It makes me sad knowing our big tree fort was torn down years ago, the old shed we hung out in has been erased from existence, and the recording studio-turned-apartment has been boarded up. Those memories, lost in time. I have to remember, it’s someone else’s home now. And I hope they love it as much as I did during those years.

My immediate family no longer resides in that town, where our family had lived for nearly a century. One by one, we all left. My older brother lives near where we both grew up and has raised his family in that area, but other than that… everyone else is gone. I don’t even drive through it anymore when I visit him — there’s no reason to now. My Dad used to say “the best thing about [our hometown] is looking at it through the rear-view mirror when you’re driving away.” He wasn’t wrong. Now that was something I connected with.

I have never been able to eradicate the feeling of envy that swells in my belly, that weighs my shoulders down, when I think of or see people “going home” to visit. On long weekends. Holidays. Summers. Fall or Spring breaks. Even though I’m very far removed from college breaks in my (what I hope is) middle age, the feeling has never really gone away. When I see photos friends share of going home for Thanksgiving or taking a long holiday weekend away from normal life with family in their respective hometowns, I feel like I’m missing out, because I never got to experience that. I never will.

This is a me problem. I’m glad for those who experience a feeling like that — I imagine it to be wonderfully sublime.

Still, I can’t help but feel a certain way about what it meant to go home. I never referred to my hometown as home after I left, because it didn’t feel right or authentic to do so. It was a place I spent my childhood. And when I got the opportunity, I ran like hell and never looked back. I see people share photos or hear about those who never left the area and I wonder why, mostly. Why someone would choose to stay there. I recognize their experience there was probably vastly different than mine, and that place is home for them. I understand it.

And just like that, I learned you really can go home again.

That sentence has been written before, uttered in a movie or an essay somewhere, by someone far more prolific than I could ever be. As far as it goes for me, this is not something I’ve ever learned. It’s definitely not something I’ve ever been able to say. I have to admit though, I do love the trope of it — like a holiday Hallmark movie, where the woman from a small town exits the big city to return to her roots, for whatever reason. Open a bookshop or a bakery in her home town. Fall hopelessly in love with someone she grew up with but never gave a second glance. And they live happily ever after! Honestly, good for her! At times in the past, I wished I could be her! In reality… that could never be me. I can’t say I haven’t thought or dreamed about it could be, though.

What would it be like to just, go back to living in my hometown — a place I have barely visited over the last twenty years? Buy or rent a house in the country and shop at the local IGA? Nah. It’s not for me, for a plethora of reasons. Nice place to visit but I wouldn’t wanna live it, as they say.

It wasn’t until I moved in with my husband many moons ago did I actually connect with the idea of having a home. The idea of going home. After a long trip, or traveling without him, I can’t wait to come back to our home. Sure, I had a decent apartment before we moved in together and I enjoyed where I lived, but it didn’t feel like home. I felt safe there, it was mine, but the feeling of home wasn’t realized for those, in retrospect, few short years between leaving my hometown and moving in with my husband.

Now, without a doubt, my home is where I am with him. And it has been for a long time. The bricks we live within are lovely, but if I’m being honest, any place we land feels like home, so long as I’m with him. 🩷

…and just like that, she finally connected the dots and learned home is not from where you grew up or spent time as a child. It’s where you make it. With the people you love and with whom you share your life.

📸 Owen Rupp, Unsplash