Writing

Where do you call home?

17 Comments

Hello, hello hello!

I’ve been on a serious Gilmore Girls binge. Like, it has truly messed with my life. A hitting-rock-bottom type binge. More on that to come. I have been working – a lot , and I have some decisions to make – more on that to come. I’ve been very busy with cross country – very busy – and more on that to come.

I miss you. I miss this place.

I was reading some of the essays for Finish the Sentence Friday this week and realized I wrote something for a class a few years ago that would be perfect. So I’m going to link up – LAST minute. And I also wanted the chance to say, “Hi!”

Also, I have a winner to announce. Caryn! You won the book, The Velvet Hours, from the last Books of My Life post. Please email me your address.

Now the link-up. This essay was an assignment from a class I took a few years ago on memoir. We were asked to write for ten minutes about where we call home. Ready set go, this was the result…

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Where do we come from? Where do we call home? In the literal sense, I think of home as where I live – a dwelling surrounded by four walls, which I decorated with love, and which protects the people whom I love most in this world.  Home should evoke a sense of peace, exhale a breath.  There should be familiar smells, laughter, and many comfortable places to rest.  It should be the place you run to when you’re happy, and when you’re sad.  You should miss home when you’re gone.  For me, my home is all of this and more.

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Me, with the kids in front of my childhood home on the Cape.

Home also makes me think of where I was born – on Cape Cod.  I haven’t lived there in over thirty years and have very few ties left, but something pulls me back.  Whenever I cross that bridge over the Cape Cod Canal and ingest the salt air, a feeling rolls over me. It’s a physical reaction.  I am home.  I bring my kids and husband back as often as I can, because I feel as though I’m a different person when I’m there.  Younger, reflective, slower, more hopeful.  My time on the Cape was one of the happiest periods of my life.  Crisp clean air, rough oceans, jetties, sand dunes, leaves, salt box houses, villages, lobsters, fried clams.  I cry when I leave.

I have another home.  Naples Florida is where I spent most of my formative years.  I have friends there, old friends, which are the best kind.  It’s the last place my original family was a family.  Mom.  Dad.  Edmund.  It makes me sad, honestly.  It’s hard to go back, yet I do.  I went to high school there, and some college.  It’s where I learned to drive, play tennis, drink coffee.  The place of firsts:  job, car, best friend, apartment, boyfriend, love, heartbreak.  It’s a place of loss.  My mother and father died there.  They are buried there, and so is my brother.  It’s the place where I lost my innocence.  But my, oh my, it sure does showcase some beautiful sunsets.

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17 thoughts on “Where do you call home?”

  1. You nailed everything I think about home, but better. Your reflections on the Cape are mine in Denver. Well, okay, they’re not, but the whole going back and moving forward and having home now versus yesterday and wanting to take our kids to our pasts? THAT. SO GLAD you linked up.

  4. What a beautiful post filled with nostaligia. I felt the ache for you missing the places that are home.

    I totally know the rock bottom you’re talking about. I did that with Breaking Bad and I said I’d never binge watch again. I was more productive when I moved on to Mad Men. I’d be holding my iPhone and dusting blinds – stuff like that.

    1. Thanks Kenya. Last night was the first night in six weeks that I didn’t watch a Gilmore Girls. Can you believe it? I watched the debate and fell asleep. My time would have been better spent with the Lorelies.

  5. Beautiful post Allie. It’s true that “home” can take on so many meanings. Having lived in the same house my whole life until college, it’s easy for me to identify my dwelling, but the idea of home has taken many different forms.

    Also, WHAT?! I won something?! So excited to read the book. I’ll email you my address. Thanks! 🙂

    1. The same house? How lucky are you! I wanted to give that to my kids, but it didn’t happen. Although, we’ve set a record in our current house (6 years) and the younger two don;t remember the other houses – so I guess it’s possible. But, alas, I have wanderlust – and the rocky mountains whisper to me every so often.

      And Congratulations;)!

  6. I’ve never been to Naples, but I can almost feel it because of this.
    Cape Cod is home to me too, in a way I found in adulthood. I think about it all the time.

  7. Beautiful piece Allie. You put your heart and soul into every writing you do. So appreciate that kind of honesty.

    So, how do you feel about your current home? I like you think of somewhere else when I say “Home” with a capital “H”. But I feel like I’m leaving my kids out… they love my Home too, but their home is here in Georgia. I haven’t encouraged them to love Georgia (not exactly consciously, but that is what I’ve done). As a result I recently realized my kids don’t have a hometown love like I had. I feel bad about that. Have you managed that better than me?

    1. Thanks Paula! How are you????

      I don’t know how I feel about our current home. Our county is getting way too crowded, it has me a bit panicked. You know? SO much change in the last 11 years, I feel like I’m living down in Alpharetta. I don’t know. And you’re right – I’ve done a disservice to my kids, especially with all my out-loud longings about moving. They definitely have a loyalty to our town (based on their protests each time we say we’re putting a sign in the yard), but I think it’s more about school friends. They don’t want to switch schools, which I understand. I don’t think they have a unwavering affinity for GEORGIA. And that probably is my fault.

  9. I’m not sure if I knew you were originally from Cape Cod, or that you grew up in Florida. I miss you Allie – hope you are doing well.

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