It's so close to the Hope/Fear project, it's bound to be great.
This is the brainstorming for my piece on Thursday on “what makes a home a ‘home’”.
In a few months, my house at 4330 Tucker North Drive will cease to be my home. My parents, who have retired, will make the move from Tucker to their smaller, more practical retirement house in the mountains of North Georgia.
Ever since I left for college in the fall of 2002, 4330 Tucker North Drive was always a fallback. There was always a free meal there. My bed – the only bed I had ever owned until sleeping in the GT dorms – was always available for me. There’s wireless internet. The clothes that I don’t wear but don’t want to throw away (and the toys I never play with but don’t want to give away) are still in my closet. I still own every video game system I have ever bought with my own hard-earned money – 7 in all – and they are all in that house.
We moved into 4330 when I was five. I remember because I had chicken pox. It’s where I mowed the lawn for the first time. I learned how to change the oil in a car in the garage. I learned how to use a circular saw in the basement. I learned how to cook in the kitchen. I learned how to sew in the guest bedroom. I trained my dog in the back yard (although not very well). I fell asleep on top of my books doing calculus homework in the computer room. I got my first kiss from my first girlfriend in front of the house, and I got crushed when she dumped me in front of the house a year and half later.
But in a few weeks, 4330 Tucker North Drive will no longer be my house. It’s a weird feeling. I still feel at home in Tucker – the Atlanta suburb where you can find Tucker North Drive – despite the fact that I don’t – or, rather, won’t – have a house there. And I think the reason why I feel like that goes something like this…
There is my house in Tucker, and there is every other building in Tucker: my old school, my church, my favorite coffee shop, my gym. When you take my house away, there are still a lot of buildings that I have memories of. Where I graduated 3rd grade, where I learned to sing in a choir, where I drank a latte every day for a month, where I developed these incredible biceps. But take all those buildings away, and what’s left is this: the people.
Here is everyone I know in Tucker. This is my family, these are my friends from school, these are the people at church, these are the people who work at Mighty Joe Espresso, these are the people who I work out with. These people are the reason I’m at home in Tucker. Even with no bed to my name in Tucker – and no collection of aging video game systems – these are people that love me. Even without my parents, there are still hundreds of people in Tucker who care about me, and that’s what makes a place home for me. Home is where you are loved.
And because of that, I also feel like Tübingen is becoming a home to me. The fact that I have an apartment and a bike and a campus house here doesn’t even compare to the fact that while I was gone in December, people here in Tübingen missed me – and I missed people here in Tübingen. I’m at home here in Tübingen because I feel loved.
