…always somewhere else.
I’m not sure if it’s a result of having never lived in one place long enough to really consider anywhere home, or the result of having lived “abroad” for nine years, but I have no feeling of Heimat. Anywhere.
Last night I slept in the same bedroom as I did when I was a two-year-old, but the house now belongs to my parents, as opposed to my grandparents, as was then the case. The fields surrounding the house are technically mine. Generations of my ancestors are interred in the local churchyard. My life exists, captured in photographs in and around this house: in black and white, in a variety of what appear to be Edwardian prams. At the age of four, in fading Polaroids, with what I can only describe as blonde Afro hair. Then a slew of photos from the age of six upwards, my hair now thankfully dark brown and with slightly less ringlets, holding various recently deceased animals triumphantly aloft – along with the instruments of their demise. I can’t decide which is my favourite, I’ve narrowed it down to two: a normally sullen teenager wearing a grin and a Smiths “Meat is Murder” t-shirt, with a gun broken over one arm and his brace of pheasants held high in the other hand. Or the boy sporting two disproportionately large “grown-up” front teeth, cleaning a salmon with a particularly evil looking knife – it’s enough to give any health and safety nazi a heart attack – which is why my parents have an enlargement to display at the door whenever they do electrical repairs themselves.
But the pictures are merely reminders of short visits - it’s not where I grew up. My parents inherited the house and moved here after I’d moved to Germany. I think I’ve lived in too many other places: Durham, Newcastle, Indiana, Sweden, Glasgow, Tübingen, Munich, Stuttgart, to truly consider anywhere my “real” home. When I left, ahem, Paris, to travel here, I said I was going “home”. This afternoon I will drive to Glasgow and part of me has a homecoming feeling about it. I’m going to go back to Stuttgart and when I do I will say, “I’m going home”.
On reflection, it’s not that I have no home, or just one, but rather that I have many. And that’s no bad thing – just a pity that I can’t rent them out when I’m not actually using them.
I know that feeling. I grew up in a university campus town and home was always where my grandparents lived, but when I was visiting them, it was always the campus town, it continued that way all over India where my father worked and now I have finally shifted into a house I bought. I’ve been staying there for 2 days and the feeling is very strange and nice. Today, at work they tell me that I might need to relocate to another city or country. Life!!
My mother has a photograph of us posing in front of my father’s laboratory and I am poking my brother in the ribs. She choses to display it in the entrance to their house. Its a very uncomfortable feeling.
Awww….. blonde afro hair is cute.
I’ve only ever lived in two places (Essen and Tübingen) and a total of three houses, but I still get that feeling. I spent more than 15 years in one house in Essen before moving to Tübingen for university, but even that doesn’t really feel like home anymore. My parents have sold the house, so even on the odd occasion that I go back to Essen I never say I’m going ‘home’. :/
I wonder how all this will change when I go for my year abroad next month.
Manual trackback (as my handmade blog doesn’t do these fancy things
)
Perhaps the question is not where is home but *when* is/was home.
I think I know what you mean. By that I think I mean I know what you mean but don’t have as many choices as to where home might be. I think the pc answer for me is “home is where the husband and boys are”. Yes, that will do for now.
I know what you mean. I have lived in quite a lot of places in UK and around the Globe, and have stopped referring to my *hometown* as home many moons ago.
I call Marburg my home now as I don’t see myself moving on in the near-distant future.
I wonder if you feel the same about nationality. I’m English, but I dont feel particularly attached to England anymore. I guess I’m starting to see the place in my minds eye as a mixture of Village cricket games and cream teas.
There is again the possibility that I have gone mad.
Yours in a bucket of custard
Haddock
As a typical Italian product I should say that home is where my mamma is. I guess it is really like that. But home is also the room in the Studentenheim where I’m staying for a month. Home is where I feel safe and warm.
Schöne Grüße, du englischer Wanderer!.
So yeah, I’ve lived on 4 different continents, in 10 different countries, 18 different cities, but I always call home wherever my parents happen to be. For example, they’re moving (again) and I’ve never lived in that new place obviously- but I’ll still call it home.
I hold a Dutch passport but have never lived there so I don’t have a feeling of “patriotism” with anywhere. I do have to say however that the place I lived the longest in is Kuala Lumpur. All my friends are there and my sister still lives there so if someone asks me for a hometown, I would say KL before anything else.
great, now I’m homesick
First, thanks for all your comments and apologies for the lack of my replies. It wasn’t just that I was in Edinburgh for an evening (home is where Hearts are) but rather, I was away for quite a while and computer access was difficult.
When you have a blog, home is where your broadband connection is.