Home Sweet Home

What makes a house, a home? For starters, I would hope we can all agree it doesn't have to be a house. Maybe it does for you, but the important part here is that it does for you. TikTok has taught me many things, one of which is that many places can make a home that aren't houses, and as a Toronto resident, I'm happy to be happy not in a house. You want to give me a house, or the money needed to rent or own one, I'll take it. Failing that, I'm good with an apartment unit please, even a condo would be fine. 

That being said, I'm definitely getting more need for space in my 'old' age. It must be a growing rebellion from my first bedroom, which also acted as a corridor between another bedroom and the bathroom. I think I was the only person (who I knew) in my university halls of residence whose room was an upgrade from my home home.

Home home; Image by Ursa Design

Home home; similar to the term 'out out' in that the repetition signifies significance. A term used to differentiate between where you currently live, and where your heart is? No. Where you grew up? Maybe. The place you lived longest in your life? In my case, yes. But also maybe a combination of where you grew up, and where a significant group of people still live, significant by relationship but also by number, percentage actually, of close people in your life. Don't worry, and sorry for the disappointment (depending on the audience), but this not a statement of wishing to move back home home.

So you can have multiple homes then, despite only living in one place. This feels very true. Again, because of people. But I now even have multiple neighbourhoods that feel like home in the city I call by the same name. When I think of things I want to do like picking a restaurant or where to buy a thing I've decided I need (to make my home more homely; what a privilege and arguably unnecessary thing in a world that's on fire), my internal map is calibrated to those places I've lived before. It makes for a long errand run, although that's the bonus of living in a city isn't it - you can get anywhere reasonably quick with a well-connected transit system. Alright, it's no TFL (Transport for London) but it's pretty good. And means I can live somewhere within my means, make a house a home where it's possible, and still be connected to my people very easily, pandemmy allowing of course (ergh).

And people definitely shape a home. The humans and/or animals you organise your home to accomodate based on the number of glasses or size of frying pan you buy, where choice exists. Or how you share, use, and love the space together, what you teach each other, how you communicate, and how you hold safe space for the each other. They teach us what we need and want and how to get them.

Of course I ponder all of this from my house, my home, which feels like a home after now having a rug to sit on in the living room. Such a small thing (not literally, it's quite sizeable, and I had to save for it but it's a figuratively small thing) that has tipped the scales for me and now makes this place mine. What a very lucky place to be.