Home

This post is less intellectual and more sentimental for me, but interesting nonetheless. I watched a movie today... a movie I quite enjoyed. Anyway, there was some great dialogue that I found very interesting. This one really interested me:

"You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden, even though you have a place to put all your crap, that idea of home is gone."

"I still feel at home at my house."

"You'll see. When you move out. It just sort of happens one day, it's gone. And you feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Or maybe it's like this right of passage, you know? You won't ever have that feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start. It's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea, you know? Maybe that's what a family really is... a group of people that miss the same imaginary place."

"Maybe."

I don't really know when this happened to me. Maybe it was while I was in college. Maybe it was when I was in Boise, making my own living. Maybe it was the time period when all my siblings all got married.

I can tell you the first time I really realized it though (I didn't put the idea together like they did in the movie, but it's exactly how I felt). It was Christmas a couple of years ago. Everyone else was at the in-laws that year, and I was the only one without in-laws.

As much as I love my parents, I came to realize that it was my brothers and sisters that were home for me. They were, after all, who I spent all my time with growing up. So my home had been taken by others, strangers. It's not so bad. I happen to be quite fond of my in-laws. But all the same, they've now got exclusive rights to my home. Even when we all get together, it's not the same. Home is gone for me.

I need a new idea of home, my own home. If only it were so simple...