Philosophical: What is real "home(land)"?

tonyb said:

Where in the PNW?

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Portland Oregon.

Good town. Never lived there myself, but I gave friends there, and have visited on numerous occasions. It'll feel podunk in comparison to Chicago, but it's big enough not to bump into yourself rounding a corner.

tonyb said:

I trust that you and your fellow survivors came away with a chunk of change, though.

I'd love to have my 82-year-old mom's (today is her birthday, coincidentally) humble little 1950s house, which she and the since departed husband of hers bought about 20 years ago.

Alas, she lives in a resort community and the view property of hers is zoned multiple. I have two surviving siblings. Provided the three of us survive her (far from a sure bet, that), the likelihood is that we would sell the place to a developer. I don't know how much equity she has in the place, and, frankly, I'd rather not know. I heard some grumbling a few years ago about her scalawag of a husband taking some money out of the property, grumbling which I largely disregarded, seeing how I couldn't do anything about it anyway.

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Yes, I have no complaints. Even though the house was very modest the land had appreciated immensely and it is helping greatly to fund my impending retirement.

Minutes ago, I realized again, that Jazz is definitely a home(land) to me!

When I'm hearing Jazz, I just feel, that it's a place, where I absolulety belong to.

Mountains or large hills with trees. And running water. And rocks. Lots of rocks, apparently. Like, so many many many rocks.

Apparently I didn't have enough of picking rocks (up out of the fields) when I was a kid. I bought a place where all the rocks washed down out of the hills and deposited them in our yard. Sigh. I keep telling my husband, "every child is born with two hands but only one mouth. And they can use those two hands to PICK ROCK."

Also, I feel strangely at home in Dublin, Ireland. Which is odd, because normally I feel like anyplace I am is *not* home, unless, well, it's home. I'm always thinking of how a place is not like where I'd like to live. I'm also not Irish (as far as I know), although I've been told I look "Black Irish" more times than I can count.

Although I never thought it would be the case, I am of the same mindset at Belfastboy and TonyB in the first page of this thread.

My brother and I just moved my dad off the family farm our family has occupied for 6 generations--since coming out to Oregon in 1847 and settled as a donation land claim. My dad had lived there since 1962 and I spent the first 19 years of my life there before going off to school as did my brother.

Up until fairly recently, I always referred to that place as “home” as opposed to wherever it was that I actually lived, even though I hadn’t lived there for more than 30 years and I have lived in my current house for nearly 15 years. No matter where I was “living”, Seattle, New York, Portland, Massachusetts, etc., the farm was “home.”

We moved my dad off the farm and into town due to his failing health about 3 months ago. It has been a long process to get him to go, but in the end he had to go, and for a number of reasons an auction was held where everything was literally sold to the bare walls. My dad still owns the property, but all the personal items are gone.

The day after the auction, my brother and I went out there to see if the auction company had actually followed through with getting rid of everything. The house was bare to the walls as promised, and it was locked. In all the time I grew up we never once locked the house and I didn’t even know there was a key for it. I don’t know if it is that it has been so long since I lived there, whether that the life I have now is so diametrically opposed to what it was growing up on the farm, or whether there has just been so much “water under the bridge” since the time I left, but the possibility/actuality of it not being there made as much difference to me as fish finding out he doesn’t need a bicycle. I do not know what will happen to the farm in eventuality, and for better or worse, I don’t care and it stuck me that I haven’t for a long time.

This summer, I had a chance to do something I have wanted to do since I was about 10 years old, take some time off and ride a motorcycle across the US, literally coast to coast. I remember distinctly in Oklahoma, thinking that no matter what happened, whether the trip was successful or not, whether the motorcycle broke and I had to abort the trip, I had a place to call home; as belfastboy stated, a soft place to land, a sanctuary/refuge, and that's where I live now. Up until that point, I had always considered it temporary even though I have owned the place for 15 years. I guess I’ve got more hillbilly in me than I ever thought.

"Home is where when you go there, they have to take you in"

tmal said:

"Home is where when you go there, they have to take you in"

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I used to know that place. I'm not so sure I do anymore.

This is home. This is where my grandfather's bones are buried. I don't particularly like the ******** place especially on a below zero February night when it's snowing sideways. But it's home.

A good question.

tmal said:

"Home is where when you go there, they have to take you in"

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I understand that, but that's not where I grew up. Love and acceptance was conditional: trying and failing wasn't a crime, but actively doing truly terrible things, according to my parents' standards - any kind of real criminal activity, reckless driving (you could kill someone), drugs (don't do them and you'll never have a drug addiction), not giving your all at a job - were.

I have no doubt - and my dad made it quite clear - that I would not have been welcome home if I had violated (at an extreme) any of the above (not a complete list, just what I could quickly pull out of my memory of fear). Trying and failing wasn't celebrated, but was accepted - but truly bad / dangerously stupid behavior would have resulted in excommunication.

My mom might have wobbled a bit (although, she was basically on board with the excommunication standard especially for driving and drugs), but my dad wasn't going to wobble. He made clear ahead of time what he expected and that was that. Hence, I am my only real home - where I am, is home. Left my house at 17 and never spent a night there again. Haven't been in NJ (where I grew up) in decades (other than taking an Amtrak through).

I've lived in the United States, West (as was) Germany and, now, Scotland. I don't have a 'real' home town, nor any particular country even where I feel at home exclusively.

I am happiest in my den, here I can slam the door shut to the world and grow old amongst a lifetime worth of stuff and memories.

I have now moved 400 some odd miles from what I used to consider my home (and I'm now nearly 500 away from where I grew up).

The mountains here are bigger, they are filled with trees, and if I dig in the backyard, there are rocks. The trees are different species, not the beloved evergreens of my youth, but the beech and the ash will do. The rocks aren't granite, but there is enough of them.

And I've convinced my oldest to "collect" (gather) rocks as a hobby.

This is something think about quite a lot, having grown up in a place where identity politics is everything, moved away from there, and ended up in London - largely by accident. I'm fiercely proud and protective of my own Irishness, but I'd die before I ever live in Northern Ireland, where I grew up, again. I can tolerate short visits, but the place gives me the heebie jeebies. Nothing makes me love living in the big city more than a sharp reminder of small-village life where you keep certain opinions to yourself I you don't want everyone knowing them, where everyone knows you business - and thinks its theirs. London very quickly felt like home for a lot of reasons (not least, ironically, that it's easier to be Irish here for me, without that having to be any big statement of political intent or such). My flat just felt right the first time I saw it; I no feel very much like my part of East London is home - Herself does too. If we ever came into money we wouldn't dream of moving to Kensington, St John's Wood, Holland Park, Notting Hill..... We're Whitechapel people, and that's where we feel we belong. (Neither of us is from London originally, though I've been here the longer by about fifteen years.) The cat, formerly cats plural, and to be so again in the next year, hopefully, further makes my flat itself feel a real home.

In terms of other places I have felt immediately at home, that would be Dublin, Glasgow, both for obvious reasons, and also the Germanic cultures. I have - generations back - a lot of German and Swiss blood, maybe it's some sort of ancestral voice. I love France, but Berlin I could easily imagine living in.

I have no love lost for where I was born and spent the first 16 years of my life. It's not 'home.' The place is barely recognizable to me now. But that's not the whole of it.

All the while I was there, the dominant personalities of the neighborhood were not the way I behaved.

My borough was a stereotype - a living stereotype. I don't know how many people don't realize just how accurate Saturday Night Fever (1977) really was. Even before the disco era took off, those types of attitudes and personalities were everywhere. It had to come from somewhere, after all.

We moved east just before my 17th birthday, and I instantly found people my own age were mostly pleasant people. I became known as 'the guy from Brooklyn,' simply because I was from Brooklyn, and not because I acted like Tony Manero, leather jacket not withstanding.

Over time, that became more my home more than my birthplace ever did, but now I need to get out again - a complete relocation is needed. I'll probably go west, at least 500 miles or so.