It’s easy to get distracted when thinking of home.
It’s a word often used in passing and nearly always spoken of subjectively.
Though it often figures as a physical space, it is likely we all think of it as much more than a simple roof and bed.
Home is a space where people feel they can be the version of themselves closest to the one they embody when no one is watching. While this is easy to simplify into some sort of platitude, that home is simply where we are most comfortable taking a shit, where our old toys linger or where life altering moments first take place, it is…simultaneously so much more and yet somehow less than all that.
To me, the word home carries no physical weight. Home is escapism. It is a reality that at times feels unreal. It is both consistently emerging and yet fixed in place. Simultaneously transient and permanent; it is a space associated with deeply layered emotions. It is an epic, twelve layer chocolate cake that exists purely for my consumption and yet no piece is uniquely mine… as home is surely a space that can only exist when shared with others.
And yet, not all of us come from a ‘good home’. Factually speaking, we haven’t all had positive upbringings. For some, the idea of home isn’t escapism, it is quite simply the feeling of being trapped. Trapped for any number of reasons, not limited to sexual preference or unconventional lifestyle choices. While we can all agree that the ever present kitchen ornament ‘home is where the heart is’ is both trite and cheap, for some, the sentence is simply a lie. It is important to acknowledge this but also, for the sake of this article, best put aside for another time.
Now, regardless of your conception of home, I do believe that a person’s home, be it positive or negative, can only truly be embodied outside the burden of words. It is a gestural space. A space where hands and oral communication need be used if we even dare attempt to properly capture its layered meaning…Which is why my return to Uppsala felt so strange this summer.
I spent the last few weeks surrounded by people. Since June 20th, I’ve slept on couches, beds and air mattresses. Met up with high school friends, mentors and extended family. I visited multiple cities and had enough brunch dates to last me well into the new year. At times, it made me feel ecstatic.
People made time for me. We talked late into the night about politics and life, relationships and high school gossip (who is married, who has kids and which couples have one on the way). We drank and drank, and drank some more. We wandered the streets, and anxiously awaited delayed fireworks. Spoke about eternal truths and even realised we’re getting older. This summer, home was filled with strong, positive, life affirming moments and yet it was also filled with a strange sense of unease.
Coming home after being away for a long period of time is dangerously seductive. As previously mentioned, people made time for me. Knowing it might be two years before I come back to Canada, people took time off work, organized trips and altered plans. These are things most of us don’t do for each other on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis. Now, I’m no exception here and openly acknowledge that. I’m lucky to be friends with people who take the time to make time, but why is it we so often don’t in daily life?
Because life gets in the way. Groceries need to get done and a fragile, but somewhat consistent sleep schedule needs maintaining if we hope to survive the daily rub and scrape that is adult employment….
I realise that my Canadian home is essentially a lie or at the very least a gross misrepresentation of what my daily life there would or could consist of. At the moment, fresh off the experience, I can only describe it as the best possible version of what my life there could be had I chosen to stay there. The whole summer felt like an extended reunion and even though most of my Canadian friends live in a variety of different cities, by means of busses, trains and cars, I was able to meet up with most of them, and generally felt as though I’d never left.
It’s nearly midnight and I’ve finally made it back to Uppsala. I’m writing this alone in my apartment. The idea for this articles stems from a specific moment. On the train ride in, I saw the few lit apartment windows that seem perpetually turned on when coming in from Stockholm. This view, the one that greets me every time I leave Uppsala, also made me feel like I was coming home. Only this is a home without a welcome party, where most of my friends are still out of the city and the toilet water in my apartment has all but evaporated due to inactivity.
I’ve spent the last 4 years in Sweden and prior to that worked on a ship for 8 months. In the course of being away from home for so long, there’s a certain process, a few select markers that remind me that I’m nearly back to where I grew up. It is a similar sequence of markers to the one in Uppsala and it is what I see when I get off the 138 from St. Andrews and, crossing headline road, see the tombstone shop on the left, aptly titled Funeral Friends (I had to google the name for this article and I hope a little bit of that magic moment hasn’t just died). It is situated on the outskirts of the city of Cornwall and for some reason, it has marked, ever since I moved away from University, the threshold between home, and being away from home.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that the idea of home is a complicated one. When I talk to my parents, they ask if I’m excited to come back home. They don’t live together anymore and so I guess their idea of home is also different than mine. To them, I believe, visiting means going to their house and sharing physical space. It means sleeping in a bed that’s been put aside for me. Sharing a pot of coffee and planning the day’s activities. It means staying up later than usual and sleeping in. It means going out for breakfast, lunch or dinner, way more often than is healthy because no one makes pizza like Riverside and that new Thai place is to die for.
I guess what it comes down to is, this summer, I felt like I was coming home when I was entering Cornwall and I felt a version of the same upon entering Uppsala and those feelings have never really felt mutually aligned. I don’t think I’m about to provide any real answers to the concept of home and I’m not sure if I feel more confused now than I did sitting in that train. What I can say is that home is where the people are or aren’t. That it’s a safe space until it isn’t. That it is both foreign and exotic, comfortable and predictable. It is a paradox worth dissecting. Ultimately, it is a space worth revisiting, wherever your home may be.
describing space 
You raise interesting reflections on what home can be considered. As you may well know, most of my life I’ve spent abroad and home is a strange concept. I think I came to the conclusion quite early on in my travels that “home base” is not the same as “home” and “origin” is related to “home base” and “home” becomes anywhere that I living on a reasonably permanent basis.
While you might find your current home situation quite confusing, consider this: what will it feel like when home or home base become either less defined, or non-existant? Will you come to the same conclusion as I, that where you are is home?
//D
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I think home is a version of a prison cell. As we grow more attached to the accumulated objects that populate our home, we grow less and less likely to travel for fear of losing or displacing those objects. I would like to believe that people exist outside the confines of a physical space, but the truth is, we still, even with technology, tend to be defined by our living spaces. I guess I could say that I hope and strive to redefine home base in order to create a less material based space. Home is where my friends and family are but as my friends and family continue to move, be it city, province, or country that space expands on a previously ungraspable scale.
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