How Do You Make a Place Home?
I changed the desktop wallpaper on my computer to an image from back in the US near where I grew up:
One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is the idea of home. I see home as a very positive thing, and I’m learning that home is what you make it.
For a long time, I was working very hard to reach out and meet the expat community in Berlin. I’ve met some really amazing people (like my friend Toma!). It’s beyond inspiring to sit at an outdoor cafe, chatting over coffee with people who love where they live.
You don’t have to be fluent in the local language to call a place home. You don’t have to completely understand the culture around you to love it. You just have to be open.
At the same time, I have been meeting expats who just ache to get back to where they came from. They hold on so tightly to the world where they came from – to the place where everything was comfortable. I come home feeling drained. Somehow, I’d love to give them passion for this fabulous place where we get to live, no matter if we are in Berlin or any other place. It’s all about your attitude and the way you look at everyday life and the choices you get to make. No one can alter that for you – no matter where you live or have lived.
So what is home?
If you’re not there right now, what do you suppose could change that?
Is it physically moving to a new place? Or is it moving your heart?
The interesting thing about the picture I just showed you is that I snapped it as we were moving. We were leaving one home and going to create another. Definitely one of those glass half-full or half-empty moments.
We had to let go of the place we were leaving and embrace the new place where we were heading.
Home.
How do you make a place home?
April 29th, 2010 at 3:09 am
I moved so much as a child and used to envy those who grew up in the same place. Teenage hormones sometimes caused me to say, accusingly, “I have no home!” and one time my father said, “Yes you do, home is where your family is!”. For me, that was actually true. I was blessed with a close family – I think moving so much pulled us closer. He was right.
However, as I got older, and sometimes “home” was sometimes a 2-month lease on a hotel room between houses – well, I felt the word ‘home’ was getting abused and stretched thin. At the same time, my definition of ‘family’ was also getting redefined; the circle of ‘family’ had grown to include the closest of friends – those who didn’t usually survive the next move. So then there was a grieving process.
As I look at where I am after 3yrs of living in Germany, not a place where I spent the bulk of my life, ‘home’ continues to be a place where my most immediate family is located – in this case my husband. I’m not here on an assignment with an expiration date. This is not a short adventure; this is the long haul. With that perspective, the definition of ‘family’ also includes the closest of friends – which take time to make. So, in a sense, I don’t yet really feel at home here.
What I find interesting is the deep-connectedness you can have in certain places. One of invisible roots. Where are those places and why do they call to us? =)
April 29th, 2010 at 5:12 am
I have stopped thinking of home as a place. I now think of it as people. I feel like expats, and anyone who has ever spent extended periods traveling end up in a tough situation–with homes all over the world you always feel at home, but there is always someone to miss too. At the end of the day it’s not a particularly bad situation to find yourself in, I think.
This way of thinking about home has become even easier of late–now that my home is a place with wheels. I could never bring my bauwagen to the US, but I like the idea that I could move around Germany or Europe without ever having to pack or unpack a box.
Beautiful home picture by the way. Where was it taken?
April 29th, 2010 at 6:47 am
Katie,
That really is some words of wisdom you shared when talking about home. My family moved from Wichita, kansas to Dallas, Texas a couple years ago, because both of us were offered better paying jobs. We thought this would bring us happiness, and joy. Even though it allowed us to live a more lavish lifestyle we were now somewhat isolated. All my family was back in Kansas, all her family still in Germany. So we began toying with the idea of moving to Germany. I had been there with here about a half dozen times and I always loved the country side and the simpular european lifestyle. Well about a year her granfather died, and this bought a reality to my wife that she start seeing her family members leave us with out even being near. Her grandmother who she is very close with lives in a farm house in a village outside of Berlin, as does the rest of her family. We decided that money was not go to give us happiness family was, much like Juliette R. talked about. So we made the decision to move, my only reservations was the language barrior for the kids and finding work.
Well I am happy to say, my wife and kids have been there a week as of today and my wife as not sounded this happy in a long time. My son has already made several friends on the block. My daughter who loves horses has found several clubs where she can ride all the time. The biggest thing they are all surrounded by family that love them, and I am so happy for them all.
Now it me that cannot wait till I am able to join them. I still have a house I own in Kansas and I have renters living there and cannot move over until after they move out. I am counting the days till August when I can go visit them all.
April 29th, 2010 at 8:50 am
“Bloom where you are planted.” — I’ve always loved that quote. My spiritual home is the Hawaiian Islands, and tho I visit often, I haven’t lived there in many years. In the first ten years after leaving the islands (at age 20) I would get inconsolably homesick just seeing a picture of home, or hearing the lovely music. I realized that if I was going to be truly happy I would have to “get over it” – and make my home and my life wherever I was planted. It really is a choice……That said, I have never lived in a country other that the US, and I know that not hearing your own language spoken would be difficult, at least in the beginning. I have visited Germany several times, and loved it!
April 29th, 2010 at 9:48 am
I agree with earlier posters who say that “home” is connected to the important people in our lives. I am a military wife displaced from where I grew up by my husband’s first assignment. At the beginning of the assignment, I was very uncomfortable with where we live. The landscape is different. We live near the US/Mexican border so the language for the most part is also very different. It also didn’t help that this was my first major move away from immediate family. Over the several years we’ve been here, I’ve become much more comfortable with my surroundings (probably partly a result of becoming more comfortable with myself away from the support of family.) However, even with my new found comfort level, it is my husband’s presence that makes this place “home.” If he were to receive orders tomorrow, this town we currently call home would become just another place on the map.
I have to echo Juliette’s comment about the “deep-connectedness you can have in certain places.” Why do some places seem to call to us even when we’ve never been there before? One day I hope to visit a few of the places that call to me to see if they stand up in person.
April 29th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
oh katie…this could not have come at a better time for me :) i’m sitting in our little 2-bedroom apartment on the ONLY chair in the entire place. my air mattress is in the other room–& the second bedroom (to be used for storage) remains empty. the neighbors are stomping upstairs. cars are driving by with loud music. the puppy next door is barking. and i’ve only been here 5 days!!! my husband is scheduled to come back from iraq in a few weeks & since i’d moved back “home” to be with family for the duration of his deployment, i wanted to come back to his base station so he would have somewhere to come HOME to. the ironic thing, though, is that this little apartment feels NOTHING like home. our stuff still sits in storage. his clothes are all packed up in boxes…& yet, THIS is where WE will be…which makes it our HOME.
i decided this morning that the few extra dollars we might spend making the white walls brighter & the tiny apartment more “home-y” are completely worth it to me. the loud neighbors & their annoying pets are temporary…& living in situations like this will give both of us an amazing opportunity to focus on the positives: our lives, our marriage, our faith, our friends. we’ll only be living here for the next 4 months (ironically we’ll be living on less while all our “stuff” sits in boxes in the second bedroom) but this post was a perfect reminder to try to make the best of our time here!
April 30th, 2010 at 1:07 am
hmmm – I honestly can’t remember where I took this picture. The drive was 10 hours. Eww! Rocky Mountains, going north. Or maybe west. I can tell you that!
This would be one of those times to have a GPS record of where you snap photos, huh? I’ll keep thinking…
Katie
April 30th, 2010 at 1:07 am
Oh and you all are so right. Home is where your heart is… which is so much about where your FAMILY is.
Good luck on truly testing our theory, jpritchard!
Katie
April 30th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
I don’t know! I am living in one place and ‘from’ another. I guess for me, home is where my dogs are. If I’m committed to a place strongly enough to move my dog there, it’s home. I’ve lived in temporary situations and left my dog at my mom’s – but when he comes to live with me, I know that the new place really is HOME. I don’t think it has to do with length of time in a place. Maybe it has to do with intention. For me, anyway.