Pattern of Migration Response

It's interesting to try to think about where or what you would call your home; how does one classify the concept of "home"? I know this is something that a lot of us at our particular age (college student, near graduation or not) think about and try to define for ourselves.

How does one define home? Is it just somewhere to keep your belongings and sleep at night? Is it the place where your family lives? The town you grew up in or went to college in? Home is something that is so deeply personal to all of us. It can't just be the roof that you sleep under; many of us have slept in places so very "not-home" that it would shock us to refer to them as such. Many people very emphatically insist that their childhood or family home, the town in which they grew up, or the state they're from is not their home. I think the old cliche phrase seems to capture a part of that mysterious element to "home-ness"... to put it simply, home is where the heart is... or is it the mind? Perhaps the most important thing to some is not the emotion associated with a place, but the purpose found there. That remains up to the individual to define.

Many of us have to make journeys and have different experiences before we can find the place, or places, that become home. The average college student begins to dissociate from the childhood home, no longer really viewing that as "the place to belong" as he or she branches out and creates a new or more complex identity. For some people, accepting a new home involves a complete break with the old one; the thing that comes to mind is the student whose grandmother refuses to divulge the entire family name. It seems like the old, European home has been completely shut out by this woman... even to the point of changing her name and declaring death to her old one.

As if to further emphasize the point that home is a personal definition, people live in environments that seem frightening, alien or distasteful to others. Places like Phoenix, AZ, where temperatures reach excess of 110 degrees Fahrenheit, or Iraq, where dust storms and brutal street violence seem to be the norm, or even the far reaches of Northern Canada and Alaska, where sometimes the night never ends. Who would want to live there? Someone, obviously... but certainly not me.

The funny thing is... every place you go that becomes your home, gives a piece of itself to you and never allows you to let go of it. Only a couple years ago, I returned to campus after a break and looked at Trowbridge, the residence hall, as my home. That all ended last year, when situations happened that made me want to be anywhere but Kalamazoo, MI. I moved on, in my mind and in my heart, and realized that Colorado really was my home even though I had done everything I could to escape from it and my parents' identity and plant roots elsewhere. But a small part of me still looks around, here, and feels like this is a piece of my home.

Maybe it was that mental returning... that ability to realize that somewhere you've left is really still your home, that brought the O'Kane elder to desire to be buried in Ireland. And maybe it's just fine to have many homes, or none at all. I think I am lucky... I know where both my home, and my heart are. And part of me wonders... is that something ridiculous to know as a twenty year old woman who is still partly forming an identity? Do I really know? Or do I just think I do?