This is not the most fun time spent in a long time for a Saturday afternoon. I thought I was going to spend a great time in the north of this beautiful state called Virginia – home.
I’m in the middle of many car shops, waiting for my car to have the last touches. What to do best while waiting? Think. So, here I am - thinking. I was thinking about home. What is home? This question might sound easy to answer. It’s not. Not even close to be.
Is home the address you give to buy stuff over the internet? Is home the land who watched you born? Is home the place where you met the love of your life (if you met him/her already)? What is home? Perhaps home is the place where you discovered the passion for some activity. How to establish the meaning of home? Let’s see.
For over twenty years I thought of home of my camp house in the South American coast: Dry, mild weather, occasional disgusting lizards and many explorations in the over 30 avocado trees. I thought of home of the big yard where I used to play with my great boxers (and Petruccio in a later stage of my life). I thought of home when I remembered the endless times crying next to that particular Poinciana tree that grew along with me and my sisters. Wow! I thought that was home. And it was. Is it still home? No. Why? Let’s see.
As I said before, everything is relative especially if you’re talking about material things. There’s no reasonable way to understand the human attachment to things when there’s no emotional attachment to memories or feelings. Describing home as a physical place is not a definition of home. I always thought of home as a building, as a mixture of bricks, cement and some other materials, but I never saw it as an explanation of what’s in the air, what’s in between those walls. Maybe I did. As soon as I wrote the last paragraph I thought of the framing of the door that welcomed my ex-room. It marked so many memories: Who grew more over the weeks at home. That framing sure has part of the essence of my life. That was me, a person who did believe in home as a building. Is it home still that place? Nahh, why? I don’t know.
So, here I am still trying to figure out what’s the meaning of home. Why is important to find a place? Why is important to have a location in this world. Why to have “the” place instead of having the places? Having so many questions in my mind I should probably start thinking of what home means now. Being 25 years old…Do I know the meaning of home? Am I at home right now? For years now I thought of it. However, some unwelcoming people decided to take over the job of telling where is NOT home. How could it be possible that a video rent spot could be the perfect place to judge a person who wasn’t as light color as them? Immigrant? YES! I am! So what? Am I less than you? No. Why then to tell me that my race in the US is considered a stack of sh*t? Unbelivable! Should I turn down based on that? No. Do I feel offended? Of course!
However, that kind of situation isn’t going to put my focus away of my pursuit of defining home. Regardless of people who are so focused on colors, having a pretty (excuse my manners) colorless color, I am determined to find home…I guess I got it.
Home isn’t a land. Not for me. Home is the security and comfort I find in people who love me. Home can be a moment, a smell or a taste. There are no physical attachments to anything to feel like home. Home is an abstract beautiful feeling inside. Home is to share what you have in your mind and not in your pockets or credit card. Home is memories. Home is love. That’s what home is about…There’s no southern country style town of high class big city that defines home.
Who else could know better what home is?
