My roommate and I kept a mason jar labeled “questions” on top of the microwave in our freshman dorm. A stack of sticky notes and a pencil sat expectantly next to it. I’m not sure why we made the jar or what we were collecting questions for, but as freshman we had this wide-eyed hope that all our questions could have answers. I scribbled one on a green post-it: “the concept of home in nomadic cultures.” This was pre-covid, this was when my college dorm was only the second address I had ever had, this was before my life transformed into moving every three to eight months and starting anew. Before the answer mattered, in short.
I never did find the answer but after eleven addresses in five years I would really like to know. What does home mean amidst constant moving? It’s degrees, I know that much at least: home widening to encompass each new place. I’ve thought a lot lately of the idea of carving out a home, of how, in some places I’ve lived, it has taken a forcible effort of will to imbue a room with softness and welcome. Here I am choosing to let things fall into place, to bring my own gentleness and let it be enough.
Here is what home has meant to me, in each one that I have had. A green front door and loving embraces. A jar of questions and lying on the rug on the floor, feeling like it was all so big but here we were, together. Golden sunlight so brilliant it seemed tangible and burnt bacon and a picnic blanket on the ground. Steam rising off a cup of coffee on the balcony at sunrise. Home has been the mountains, rain pouring outside the window, the river swelling below. Home has been the desert and heartwrenching sunsets each daily drive from work. It was bicycle chimes and canals and the caramel smell from the street market. Pink sunsets painting my kitchen and quiet evenings reading at home. At my last address home involved sleeping on the floor and having my belongings in a perpetual state of packing and unpacking, but it was also Sunday dresses and Saturday hikes and the wildflower lattes my friends made at their coffee shop.
I have been lucky, remarkably lucky, to have so many homes, so many lives in just this short time. But I think also of a sight that greeted me once in the desert: a tumbleweed on my neighbor’s welcome mat, unrooted, bumbling through on its quest for home. The image has stuck with me more than it should have through my own journeys and moves.
If I were to sum up my desires they would amount to just this word: home. I sometimes feel comforted that my true home does not exist on this side of heaven, and yet sometimes the idea of wanting the infinite is terrifying to my little heart. So, returning to the finite: I am allowing home to unfold here, in whatever form that takes. Walks by the canal and Sunday morning croissants, the familiar rituals of mass in my own language in a centuries-old basilica, coffee breaks between classes and conversations on the bus to the grocery store. The more alarming part, too, is life without a countdown, with two whole years until I have to pick up and move again, and part of me wildly considers leaving as though I’m entropically drawn to the chaos of never-ending transition.
But let’s let it be. Home is happening here. Not something I have to create but something that is and will be. Home is here where my feet are, an intangible thing appearing more solid day by day. I’m thankful, truly.
I never found the answers to the question-jar questions. I do not know how nomadic cultures think of home. Maybe someday I will learn. But for myself, I think I am answering this question each day I choose to choose this, each time I return to my apartment after saying, “goodnight, friends, I’m going home.”