What Does Coming Home Mean to You?

Where is home for you? A distance that you can quantify in hours traveled or miles traversed?

I cross the invisible finish line: spider silk strung out across the front door just for me. The smell of painted walls and settled drywall dust rushes out to greet me before sensory adaptation kicks in. Impassable piles of stuff and a low-pressure shower seem to say, “Welcome home! Now slow down.”

When I get home from traveling, or even just from a season or spell away from the house where I grew up, I always feel a surge of nostalgia wash over me as I walk through the door. I feel my internal gears shift back to a pace established long ago. At this pace, the leaves outside the window change from lush green to a toasted auburn before my eyes. Overnight, bare branches become stark, webbed lines heavy with new snow.

In my experience, the familiarity that accompanies coming home is full of contradictions. My feet know how to climb the staircase in less than five seconds, but I couldn’t tell you exactly how many steps there are. After months of being away, I will still unintentionally fall asleep on the couch if given the opportunity (and a blanket). And though it sounds strange, sometimes I just want to bask in the novelty of being home again, and fight off sensory adaptation as long as I can.

Home for me has a specific smell and a geography all its own. It is the place that I share with my family, and the stage for my earliest memories. Robert Frost once wrote, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” I like to think that it is as much a place that I can appreciate and take in as it welcomes me back each time I return.

Article written by Marina Kaneko.