Most of us wake up everyday to a soft light and the sight of a place you’ve seen many times. Perhaps you’re typically alone when you wake up and have comfort in the feeling of having the bed to yourself and waking up to make coffee and watch some videos or read a few pages from your favorite book. Others may wake up to the sight of someone familiar. Their embrace makes you feel safe. The familiarity feels like home and creates a feeling of stability, security, and comfort. Once you arise from bed, it’s time for the routine of breakfast, coffee, and work. Whether you grab your coffee at the same place down the street or you make it with someone you love in the kitchen, this is just another part of your routine that makes you feel safe. On your way to work, you take the same route of trains or car ride while playing that one song that reminds you of all the memories you had while hearing it. At work, that first “hello, good morning” you exchange with fellow coworkers everyday brings a sense of comfort. Once we are back home and return to that familiar environment, we catch up on a few pages of that book or tv show catching up with the same story we’ve been following for some time.
These are the feelings that help us to know what to expect. However, my home is not one person or one place. Similarly to many in the world, it’s spread all over the planet and split amongst so many people. You could say I live in New York but according to the Summer I had, I would say I haven’t properly lived here in awhile. I have a home in Bushwick where people are covered in tattoos and dress like it’s fashion week as they pick up their morning coffee. I have a home in Cyprus that has palm trees in the back yard and open windows with a view of white buildings covering the streets. I have a home in Brooklyn Heights with families everywhere and a beautiful skyline view that lights up at night. I have a home in Connecticut with grass and trees everywhere and bunnies that jump around during the day. I have a home in Michigan with two gentle dogs I grew up with and a live piano typically playing in the background. Each of these places house people that are so significant in my life, it only increases that feeling of home when I wake up to the same sight of the sun through a different window.
Each home has countless memories of board game nights, hours of deep conversation over tea, making pancakes on Sunday mornings with Miles Davis playing in the background, afternoons drinking on greek coffee in the backyard while drawing pictures of the people around me, and evenings laughing in front of the tv sharing commentary with people I love. We long for the consistency and seek this feeling of comfort, but for most of us, the feeling of home changes everyday. Each person and memory creates this general feeling of home that changes over time and creates and general feeling of comfort. Knowing the sun will always rise in the morning and someone I love will share morning coffee with me is enough to make me feel okay. Home is not always where we sleep. Home remains in memories and feelings that come and go and changes consistently in our lives regardless of our “billing address.” But most of all, my true home is the most anticipated that I haven’t seen yet, because it’s still being prepared for the right move-in date that awaits each and every one of us, and that is the true feeling of home that we have yet to experience.
