When you travel around a lot, stay in temporary lodging, and expect to be moving again soon, home is about the little things you carry with you. It’s about the small tokens you place on a desk, or about your guitar leaning on a wall within reach. Everything else is temporary and superfluous.
While living in Canada in 1969, I was adopted by a grey cat – Clancy J. Bumps. Mr. Bumps had sartorial requirements, like a warm place to sleep, regular meals, catnip, and toys. He disagreed with the limitations my pack placed on what we could own. But this coincided with my beginning to settle down, and we began to acquire goods. But no furniture. A shelf of books, some cookware, extra clothes, bedding, and tableware now accompanied us from rented room to rented room. We accumulated boxes to ship it all in when we moved.
Eventually I married, but all the furniture belonged to her, and when the marriage foundered and I left Coastal Maine for Pennsylvania, I shipped the boxes with what little was mine: mostly books and clothes. Clancy and I traveled south by the traditional means of thumb displayed on the side of the road – it’s amazing how many people will stop and give you a ride when there is a pet carrier by your side. Despite his reputation as “the Grey Menace,” Clancy could be very diplomatic on the road – especially if you offered to share your roast beef sub with hot peppers.
So Pennsylvania. We didn’t exactly acquire an auditorium full of furniture, but we got the basics. In Boston, we call it Alston Christmas when the students move at the beginning and end of the school year. Furniture and all sorts of goods wind up in the streets. Where I landed in Philadelphia, there was a similar custom, and I furnished from that store at a reasonable price.
You might gather from all this that home is a created concept with me. Well, I had no choice, really, for many years. But by the time I was through with grad school, I had made some decisions about where home would be. It’s New England. Having traveled elsewhere, I always found myself homeward bound to New England, and after grad school I decided that Massachusetts would be home. So occasionally I might travel, but I’m always eager to get home.
However, some habits don’t fade. As I write this, my guitar, Charlie, is nearby, hanging on the wall; on a small shelf on the desk are some small, ancient items I collected years ago, and I am closely supervised by the two cats who live with our family.
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I like how you describe a place that feels like home. Thinking of home in terms of “things” makes sense to me. My things are important to me, as they keep me connected to people and places. Like you, it’s also important for me to pick the right place. Then, the way the people feel, who are around me, is important. Sometimes I feel this home feeling when I’m visiting a place for the first time.
You described all the critical pieces: the right place, the right people, and that vibe tht says ” this is it”.
In my studio is a pair of old skis. They aren’t my skis, but they are the same model as my all-time favorite X-country skis. I got them at a thrift store here for $20. I guess they’re my Charlie. They — and some other relics in my studio — make that small room a kind of “medicine bundle” of time, people, loves, discoveries, destinations.
A medicine bundle is exactly the correct term!