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Today’s daily WP writing prompt:
“Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.”
..made me ask myself what constitutes home?
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Leaving work you’d say: “I’m going home now”, meaning returning to your current dwelling.
At Christmas you might go home for the holidays, which is a little less clear though it implies going to wherever your parents and/or family reside.
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Home could mean the place where you were born. Which might, or might not be the place where you grew up.
And may conceivably not be where your family now are.
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Consider your current dwelling.
How long must you live there before it becomes home?
If home is supposed to be where your parents are…what if that is not where you lived with them?
Does the notion of home move with them?
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Your country of origin may be home in a different sense.
My mother was born quite near here and my father always said it was where she wished to return.
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30 years after they left England, health issues made my parents return the only sensible option, or so I thought.
While they lived in Barbados, I visited often, never thinking of it as going home because it wasn’t.
Barbados is a lovely island and I was very fond of Mum, so those were vacations, like when I’d been on holiday from school.
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Deciding to sell up eventually and move to Florida they put their place on the market. Many months passed.
One Thanksgiving I got a call to say a buyer had been found but that they must be out by December 31st.
So I roped in my friend Tim to come and help, mostly for the sake of my mental health.
Our flight was in the afternoon. That morning my parents had been an elderly but independent couple.
As they got ready to leave, I saw them become old and dependent.
To see it happen in the space of a few hours was a shock.
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As the aircraft banked away from Barbados, my parents seemed fine and Tim was always happy helping out. For them it was a bit of an adventure, perhaps.
Watching the island recede, I had a lump in my throat which I thought was all about the finality of our departure, but I am sure the emotion was much deeper.
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Some seven years later my mother was told she needed a hip replacement.
When one is asked for opinions, these can only be based on available information. As far as I knew, my mother’s surgery would be unaffordable in the States.
So I assured them that English homes were now comfortably heated and that if they chose to go back, I would assist.
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It was all I said, since it was not my decision, so I was somewhat startled not long after, to find my mother weeping, only the second time I’d ever seen her in tears.
“If we go back your father won’t be happy and if he isn’t I won’t be!”, she said.
However, that was what they decided. I had not actually imagined my assistance would amount to finding them a house.
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Luckily, I had a close friend who lived in England, without whose help I would have failed.
It is ironic how things turn out.
Visiting my mother’s “middle” sister, I learned that the house across the road was for sale. It was the right price, it was warm. It was agreed.
In due course I flew with my parents to London where I rented a car to take them to their new home.
Hard to say whether I was more terrified of driving in England or introducing them to the house I had found for them.
That night I stayed over the road with my aunt and found she was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.
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Decades ago, Mum had gone up to London leaving Win to cope with an aging mother and invalid brother, but now she had come home.
Thank you, Carolyn, for the moving memories, beautifully told! It is difficult when we are young to accept that one day we are going to be old and infirm. This is why in the Middle Ages there was the symbol of Momento Mori in art and even on the tablets carried in your pocket, a good reminder of the fragility of life. In my view, home is where your heart is. That is why I never looked at Poland as my home but felt that England was where I belonged.
Joanna
Yes, indeed. The trouble is, sometimes your heart cannot be where it would like to be! Though I think I have found the place at last.
Your post today is definitely food for thought Carolyn. I’ve also recently wondered where is home. Especially since we have been living in another city for 2 and a half years now (where we rent a house), but our permanent home is 1100km from here. So, is it possible that one can have more than just one home? Well, I think at the end of the day, like Gaby said here in the comments, home is where your heart is.
I hope you realise that you can look back on your life and know that you did a lot for your parents — something I hope the younger generation can learn from you.
‘Home’ seems to mean something different to most people. Deep down, I still consider London to be home, as the home I knew for 60 years. Beetley has only started to feel like home more recently, but I will never be here long enough to really think of it as ‘Home’, even though I will die here.
I looked up the biggest distance I have ever travelled from London. It was going to be either Singapore or Beijing, with Beijing winning by just 3 miles. (5,058 miles)
Best wishes, Pete.
Just 3 miles! Not sure I would have guessed that. I always loved looking at the globe my parents had and I still have my dad’s 1948 atlas.
I had a globe too, and a huge Atlas. Loved them both.
Best wishes, Pete.
We are both in our mid 60’s and have lived in our current ‘home’ for 44 years. I have no idea how long it will take us to think of the new house as home after we move, nor how long we will continue to think of this one as home. You are so right, ‘Home’ can mean so many things depending on time and situation, but it should always be somewhere one wants to return to.
I left “home” at the age of 16 and then proceeded to create a “home” wherever I was. I got married in 1974, returning “home” from Gibraltar and then flying my wife to join me back in Gib. We had 6 “homes” and a daughter within 17 months and then traipsed around the globe creating a “home” wherever we went, often returning “home” to visit parents in between times. We bought our forever “home” in 1992 and we will need to be carried out of this one!