Essay 1 Draft 1

Natalia Ilyin’s article “Where’s Home?” shows one woman’s confusion with the current idea of what, who and why we call home. Ilyin says that she’s from New York, but that’s not her home, and that she now lives in Seattle, but that also isn’t her home. She feels our “idea of home changed from the notion of its being the center of a grounded life to its being a base camp.” Her 89 year old father tries to convince her that “home’s not a place, …you take home with you. You carry it with you,” but she adamantly disagrees that this is just a “coping mechanism” for refugees. Ilyin considers that home may not be a place or things, but she considers that it might be the people you’re with. However she quickly dashes any attachment to her friends and family because she feels she would be too much of a burden to “expect too much from too few,” as if to say her friends and family don’t want to be her friends and family, or her home.
Ilyin states early on in her article that her issues with defining home may originate in her childhood. She says she has “moved from state to state and country to country 12 times in my life.” This much movement would easily create a nomadic tendencies, and would be detrimental in trying to find a “center” of your world for the apple to fall towards, a metaphor Ilyin uses to demonstrate how important the concept of home is. Ilyin feels that because she has “never stood on the ground where my great-grandparents once stood,” it is impossible to feel a connection to her past. She seems to think that living in the land of your ancestors imbues you with a history that those whose parents’ parents moved are missing. That if her Grandmother had not emigrated from Russia she would also speak Russian and not feel a need to live as a modern nomad. Ilyin also believes we are merely gypsies, but with even less purpose, feeling that we live in “expensive caravans,” but have no direction, no purpose to be in them “we don’t follow an annual route of pilgrimage, hitting the same oasis every six months,” that we wonder aimlessly from city to city, state to state and country to country, or wherever our jobs would send us instead of deciding we need to put forth the effort to make home. Jobs, neighbors, school and family don’t mean anything unless your greatest of the great grandparents built your caravan and carved your beds from the trees they spontaneously sprouted from. In closing Ilyin remarks that she may have run as far and one can run, that she may be forced to put down roots and finally look for an answer for what is home, instead of looking for ways to disprove everyone else’s definition of home.
Home for me has always been what fills a house and not the house itself. Many times I’ve packed up all the belonging in my room, moved to a different house and then unpacked into my new room, but I also brought with me the social attitudes of place I left, not just the belongings. I feel this was an important fact that Ilyin left out of her essay. People identify themselves with where they’re from and where they’ve been more than where they are. She may not call Seattle or New York home but these cities leave a mark on her personality. We can nomadically change our dwellings as often as we please, but our emotional memories and ties fill our homes more than our belongings.
I moved several times as a kid, back and forth between Tulsa and Norman, then Springfield and finally to Port Orchard. Even in Port Orchard where I moved 5 times in a town that felt smaller then some malls the house, apartment, spare room became my home because of my belongings and the emotional luggage I brought with me. Most recently (last week) I moved to Seattle. I spent months sorting through everything I owned and deciding if the space it took up was of equal or greater emotional value to its physical presence. I feel I whittled it down to a respectful dozen boxes. I thinking Ilyin would call me a sentimental nester. I was sure I would be home sick and miss my friends, family and pets back in Port Orchard within the first week. I think that because of crap I filled my dorm room with I felt comfortable enough to explore the new city. By the second day I had a few new friends that I explored the city with by the third day I blurted out “home” when talking about the dorms. It felt like saying “I love you” on the first date, but it also felt like it wasn’t a mistake.
Maybe I’m an optimist who makes new homes and families everywhere I go. Maybe I’m in an ignorant bliss not understanding what “home” really means. Maybe I just say “I love you” on the first date.