Reflections From the Past
Longing For Home
In the film clip this morning, there were two views of home. The brother and sister experience “home” in very different ways. I will speak of both of these view of home. Every year people ask each other: “Are you going home for Christmas?” And for many of us, that question has a special meaning. Home and Christmas go together. Images of Christmases past evoke memories of a wonderful place and time in our lives. And, in reality, home is a special place - where you feel you belong - you feel safe.
Robert Frost has said that home has been defined as “a place, when you go there, they have to take you in.” Home is often pictured in our culture as that perfect place where every one loves every one else and everything is just perfect. Home is that place you always want to return to - if only in your memories and dreams.”Homesickness” is a longing for home - a nostalgia for what was, or the idealization of what we think home was. All of us have been homesick for a home of some kind. There is a longing for home A longing for connection and affirmation and acceptance. I think we all are searching for “home.”And depending on our life circumstances, home has a different meaning for each of us.
But the reality is that some of us never had such a place we could call home. Home only existed in our imaginations and dreams of what we wanted home to be. A home to return to may never have existed, or it was not a place swe want to remember or go back to. I have a special reason to focus on the meaning that home plays in my life. My memories of home were never like the Christmas Card or the sentimental variety. My first recollection of home was a large house in Catonsville with a lot of kids and very little joy. Those with one or no parents were only borders in the house, not members of the family. I recall a large kitchen and family room where all the kids ate- those with parents at one table, the rest of us at another. I remember the living room in which no one was permitted to enter. I remember the outside cellar door that led to the basement where we were only allowed to play. My best memory of “home” was when I heard that I was going to leave this “home,” and go to a military school which would then be my “home!”
For me, and I suspect for many people, I spent my early years searching for a real home, which, was a search to find something that gave me a sense of belonging, affirmation, and a loving connection with others. This may sound odd, but my search has taken me to the “home” of accomplishments — to feel at home I had to be successful in the things Idid. The only home I knew in my early years was McDonogh School, the military school where I went after Catonsville.. You got ahead and were respected -you belonged; you felt at home—- by being successful in school work, sports, and most of all, in the military aspects of the school. Later when I was married and had a family and was a part of a genuine, loving home, home was not the “home” of my family, home was still the memory of my early McDonogh home where more than any other place, I felt I belonged. During this time I lived in our family’s house, but did not feel a part of my home. Joan often said that I kept myself on the outside of the family-never fully a part. And I guess the reason for that is I really didn’t know how to act or behave in a real home .Those were difficult times for all of us. For many years there has been an empty place inside me that I try to fill because no place was really home for me.I think that there is an empty place inside many of us that we try to fill—and we call that “homesickness”- longing for the comfort and protection of home. And “home” is not always a physical place, a special house to return to. Home is a state of mind, place inside you, in which you have that sense of belonging. You are safe, you are valued. Whatever we discover our “home” to be; it is a center, a connection to all life.
So when do I come closest to being”home”-to belonging? Home has never been a specific house (because of the memories and associations of a particular house) but it has been a longing for family. As a young adult, I tried to find home in my connections with the many different groups I worked with and associated with- many different people and many organization– they were my family. For me to search for home is to seek for something that has great importance in my life. This search for a genuine home is not just to rediscover a place long ago in which you truly belonged, it is to discover now-the right now in your life– the experience of belonging, the experience of being loved, being connected to others. These” homes” of our memory are not always enough. For me there was always something missing. Being home was not always having to earn your own way to be accepted. And now, after all these years, the place where I comes closest to truly feeling at home is to allow myself to really be present with my family, and truly belong, no longer a border, no longer an outsider.
My life with Joan and our three children and eight grandchildren has finally taught me to be a part of a family. I learned what home is by being in my home. I found that my search for home is the longing to be at long last where I truly feel I belong. In the last few years, the realization of finally being at home comes to me in the birthday cards of my children. This year I received the same birthday card from two of my children. This came on my 71st birthday! This shows you how long the journey has been, and how much we all long to find our home.
