Natalia Ilyin’s article “Where’s Home?” shows one woman’s confusion with the current idea of who and what we call home. Ilyin says that she’s from New York, but that’s not her home. Then she says she now lives in Seattle, but that’s also not her home. Ilyin thinks she’s lacking a true home, unable to retrace her footsteps to a “home.” She’s confused by everyone’s attachment to houses they may have only lived in for a short period of time. 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,” meaning, she feels we move from our parent’s house in the suburbs, live somewhere, pack, move again and still consider the suburbs our ancestral home. Her 89 year-old father tries to convince her that “you take home with you,” and idea abstracted to a sweater that smells like home or a family heirloom, or even more abstracted, home is the place where you don’t need these amulets of protection. Home is the place where you empty your pockets, remove your watch and bangles and relax without thinking about it. She adamantly disagrees with the idea of home being what you take with you, saying this is a coping mechanism not home. She also wraps the idea of relaxing into nesting, that people spend unthinkable amounts of dollars annually on renovating, painting and decorating what she considers to be expensive caravans in an attempt to create a haven. Ilyin considers that home may not be a place or even things, but it might be the people you live with. However, she quickly dashes any attachment to her friends and family, feeling she would be too much of a burden on them, comparing emotional dependency to anacondas squeezing their prey to death. Closing, Ilyin remarks that she may have “run as far as one can,” that she may be forced to finally look for an answer for what is home, instead of looking for ways to disprove everyone else’s.
Ilyin states early on her issues with defining home originate in her childhood. She says she “moved from state to state and country to country 12 times in my life,” which would corrupt her view of home, crippling her ability to find a center. 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 her family tree would have a tap root to cling to.
Ilyin also believes we are merely gypsies, but with even less purpose. She feels that we live in “expensive caravans” with no direction or purpose to be in them. “We don’t follow an annual route of pilgrimage, hitting the same oasis every six months,” we wander aimlessly from “city to city, state to state and country to country,” or to whatever far off metropolis our job would send us to instead of deciding we need to discover what makes New York our home. Jobs, neighbors, school and family are irrelevant unless your greatest of the great grandparents built your caravan and carved your beds from the trees they spontaneously sprouted from.
For me, home has always been what fills a house and not the structure itself. I’ve packed up all the belonging in my room, moved to a different house and “nested.” I moved several times as a kid, back and forth between Tulsa and Norman, then Springfield and finally to Port Orchard. The house, apartment or spare room became my home because of my belongings and the emotional luggage I brought with me.
I brought with me the social attitudes of place I left, not just sweaters that smelled like what used to be home. I feel this was an important fact that Ilyin left out of her article. 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 an impression in her personality. We can easily change our dwellings as often as we want, but our emotional ties and memories fill our homes more than our belongings.
Recently I moved to Seattle. I spent months before 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 the room I lived in for 8 years that was full to the brim to what I think is a commendable dozen boxes. 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. Because of the crap I filled my dorm room with I felt comfortable. By the second day I had 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.
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