What Makes a House a Home?

With my grandparents preparing for a move next month, and me subsequently having to pack up the half of my belongings that live in their very large lakeside condo, I’ve been asking myself:

What makes a house a home?

Now, I’m no stranger to packing up my life, saying goodbye to a place I once called home, and relocating that feeling of home to somewhere new. In fact, this will be my 14th time doing so, but for some reason, this move is hitting me especially hard.

You’d think that with so many moves under my belt, I’d be a pro. But the older I get, the harder I am finding it to let go of a home. 

Home

That’s a tricky word. It’s a physical space. It’s a feeling. But does it have to be both?

My entire life has been spent traveling to different homes. Traveling back and forth between my grandparents and my mom’s based on where is more convenient that day for school or work. Or more truthfully, based on where has clean underwear. 

Oh I’ve lived the divorced parent, two homes life, just without the divorced parents part. It’s the life of living out of bags. It’s the life of not being sure in which home you last left your favourite pair of pants. It’s the only life that I know.

One thing that has always remained constant though is having my grandparents’ place as home base. Besides moving from their house into a condo to eliminate lawn maintenance, my grandparents’ living situation has remained consistent until now. And so, while I lived the adventurous vagabond life with my single mother, I always had a ‘normal’ stationary home to return to in my grandparents.

For reasons that are too long and probably too confusing to get into here, I’ve always gone back and forth between my mom’s and grandparents’ homes. And while my grandparents have had pretty ‘normal’ living situations, my mom has moved around the city in which we live a lot - for space, work, financial reasons. Though I’m honestly convinced she’s just attracted to the idea of never settling…

And I get it. There’s wonder and allure in the life of a vagabond. I for one get restless when I stay in a place without traveling for too long and find myself needing to get away, just as long as I have the comfort of a home base to come back to.

However, there comes a point, when even having a home base, you begin to lose an attachment to physical spaces. You move around so much and say hello to so many new homes, but it seems like the feeling of home doesn’t move with you.

There have been times when I have multiple homes, but feel like I have no home at all. 

The life of a vagabond has meant that I have been lucky to know so many different neighbourhoods and spaces. But it has also meant that I have belongings dispersed everywhere - in boxes, in storage, in family friend’s basements - and I no longer have a grasp on what and where is mine.

So with my grandparents preparing to move from a three bedroom condo, a place where I always had a room and bed to sleep in whenever I wanted, into a one bedroom loft, I am wondering if I ever will feel an attachment to a physical space or consider somewhere home base again.

If we define home as a physical space that is your own, then I have no home at all. At my mom’s, I currently share a room, a consequence of my mom downsizing while I was away at school in Montreal. Then I moved back to Toronto and was met with a new space that doesn’t fit quite right. And so, I’ve been clinging to my grandparent’s condo, wanting its walls to be home.

With their upcoming move looming over my head, I’ve now found myself having to abandon this idea of a home meaning a house. A home doesn’t have to be a space confined by walls, nor do I want it to be constrained to that. Rather, home can be just a feeling, a feeling that is transferable. Home can be something that is portable, rather than stationary. Something you carry with you. And once you stop trying to project it onto a wall, you can find home inside yourself.