Pretty sure that in most prairie homes there is someone’s gran’s needlework that says “home is where the heart is”. We never had that on the wall at our house because my grandmother was a nurse and she used to say things like “the thoracic cavity is where the heart is”, and also she hated needlework. Of course, now that I’ve just mentioned this I’ve decided I need to do a needlepoint of a drippy heart with “the thoracic cavity is where the heart is” and hang it on the wall.
“Home” is an interesting concept. Is it a house? A physical place? Is it a state of being? I used to walk out along the dam at the farm and sit on the big lichen-covered boulders under the scraggly trees among the long, whispering grasses and feel like I was home. Unequivocally home. Or watching waves crash on a rocky, unforgiving shoreline. That was home too.
Picked up a traveller on the highway yesterday and he’d just sold his house. Called himself “homeless”, but talked about the place he’s living and the people he cares for and who care for him and I wondered if he were actually homeless or if he was just houseless.
On Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (a theory which is over 70 years old, so I’m sure it’s been updated, changed, tweaked, and possibly dismissed; I’m not up on current psychological/behavioural research), physiological security is the base of the pyramid. But is that “home”, or is that “shelter”? Is there a difference?
What is “home” for you? How does “home is where…” end for you?
i make squee noises when you tell me stuff.