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Thursday, February 2, 2006

A Nomad’s Home

In August 1999, I left the familiarity of my parents’ home and moved all my belongings into Michigan State University’s Case Hall. Since then, I have lived in three dorm rooms, three houses, six apartments and four states. I have shared a house with 14 other people and two cats, a brick condo with a view of a beautiful cathedral that I could never see because my roommate wouldn’t allow the curtains to be opened, and a reformed hotel room with two super-Christians and a colony of Floridian cockroaches.

My home is not where I sleep or store clothes or park my car. It certainly is not where the postman delivers my bills.

Rather, my home exists in my mind. I carry it around with me like a large comfy blanket, unrolling it and reclining wherever I feel welcome and comfortable and loved. It is where and how and when I renew my reserves of energy and hope. Sometimes that’s in front of a fire at my favorite coffeeshop or at a dinner party with good friends or in the arms of a loved one. I invite others into my home when I open the doors and share my life with them – my real, this-is-me, no-pretenses life. That is, after all, where the name of this blog comes from. Open Doors. Here I am. Welcome. May I take your coat? Would you like a drink?

You could call me a nomad, and accurately so. As the Greek origin of that word suggests, I sometimes feel I am wandering in search of a pasture. Even as I carry my mobile home around with me, I often think of owning a real, physical home. A place that is permanent, with a solid foundation and my first initial and last name on the mailbox and a wooden door that I picked out and walls painted in colors that I carefully chose. A place that is serene and restorative and full of love and music and friends and the smell of cake baking in the oven. A place where my large comfy blanket can be permanently spread, that embodies and reflects the home that now resides only in my mind.

At this point in my life, with too low income and too high real estate prices, the closest I come to that dream is my apartment on the rare occasion that my roommate is out and the lights are dim and the music is soft. At those times, I can almost imagine that the walls around me are my own, that friends and family are on their way to the home that I have built, that signifies permanence and stability and success.

Welcome, I would say. May I take your coat? Would you like a drink?

——

This entry is part of a contest at homomojo.com. The winner will receive a $50 donation to the charity of their choice.

Posted by Aaron on February 2, 2006 5:54 PM