I know that I’m getting close to where I want to be when the GPS stops naming roads. That’s fine. These roads don’t have names, or even a planned logic to them, so much as they merely exist relative to other things. Out here, the roads are defined by where they go, rather than having places defined by addresses.
After a while I begin to recognize familiar landmarks. Like the roads, these landmarks don’t have names, but rather refer to some event in the past. First we drive through the small hamlet where I was strong armed into my first driving lesson. We pass the spot where my grandmother stopped the golf cart by the side of the road to point out the lavender honeysuckle to far younger versions of myself and my younger brother, and we spent a half hour sampling the taste of the flowers. Next we pass under the tree that my cousin was looking up at nervously when my father grabbed him by the shoulders and screamed that he was under attack by Drop Bears, causing my cousin to quite nearly soil himself.
I have never lived in a single house continuously for more than about eight years. I grew up traveling, an outsider wherever I went, and to me the notion of a single home country, let alone a single house for a home, is as foreign as it is incomprehensible. So is the concept of living within driving distance of most of one’s relatives, for that matter.
To me, home has always been a utilitarian rather than moral designation. Home is where I sleep for free, where my things that don’t fit in my suitcase go, and where the bills get forwarded to. Home is the place where I can take as long as I want in the bathroom, and rearrange the furniture to my arbitrary personal preferences, and invite people over without asking, but that is all. Anywhere these criteria are met can be home to me, with whatever other factors such as ownership, geographic location, and proximity to relatives, or points of personal history, being irrelevant. I can appreciate the logistical value of all of these things, but attaching much more importance to it seems strange.
Yet even as I write this I find myself challenging my points. Walking around my grandfather’s farmhouse, which is the closest thing I have to a consistent home, I am reminded of images of myself from a different time, especially of myself from a time before I was consciously able to make choices about who I am. It’s difficult to think of myself that long ago in terms of me, and my story, and much easier to think of myself in terms of the other objects that were also present.
My grandparents used to run a preschool from their house, and the front room is still stocked with toys and books from that era. Many of the decorations have remained unchanged from when my grandmother ran the place. The doors and cabinets are all painted in bright pastel colors. In my mind, these toys were as much my own as any that stayed at home while we traveled. Each of these toys has wrapped up in it the plot lines from several hundred different games between myself and whoever else I could rope into playing with me.
Against the wall is a height chart listing my, my brother’s, and my cousins’ heights since as early as we could stand. For most of my childhood this was the official scale for determining who was tallest in the ever raging battle for height supremacy, and I remember feeling ready to burst with pride the first time I was verified as tallest. I am tall enough now that I have outgrown the tallest measuring point. I am indisputably the tallest in the family. And yet I still feel some strange compulsion to measure myself there, beyond the mere curiosity that is aroused every time I see a height scale in a doctor’s office.
This place isn’t my home, not by a long shot. In many respects, it meets fewer of my utilitarian criteria than a given hotel. It is the closest I have ever felt to understanding the cultural phenomenon of Home, and yet it is still as foreign as anywhere else. If one’s home is tied to one’s childhood, as both my own observations and those of others I have read seem to indicate, then I will probably never have a home. This might be a sad realization, if I knew any different.
I have often been accused of holding a worldview that does not include room for certain “human” elements. This accusation, as far as I can tell, is probably on point, though somewhat misleading. It is not out of malice nor antipathy towards these elements that I do not place value on concepts such as “home”, “patriotism”, or, for that matter “family”. It is because they are foreign, and because from my viewpoint as an outsider, I genuinely cannot see their value.
I can understand and recognize the utilitarian value; I recognize the importance of having a place to which mail can be delivered and oversized objects can be stored; I can understand the preference for ensuring that one’s country of residence is secure and prosperous; and I can see the value of a close support network, and how one’s close relatives might easily become among one’s closest friends. But inasmuch as these things are said to suppose to have inherent value beyond their utilitarian worth, I cannot see it.
It is probably, I am told, a result of my relatively unusual life trajectory, which has served to isolate me from most cultural touchstones. I never had a home or homeland because we lived abroad and moved around when I was young. I fail to grasp the value of family because I have never lived in close proximity to extended relatives to the point of them becoming friends, and my illness and disability has further limited me from experiencing most of the cultural touchstones with which I might share with family.
It might sound like I am lamenting this fact. Perhaps I would be, if I knew what it was that I am allegedly missing. In reality, I only lament the fact that I cannot understand these things which seem to come naturally to others. That I lack a capital-H Home, or some deeper connection to extended family or country, is neither sad nor happy, but merely a fact of my existence.