A Temporary Home

This might be relatable to everyone who moved around a lot their whole life, I am one of those people. My dad had a transferable job that took us to five different states in the country. We’ve seen different lands, heard and tried to speak different languages, seen and participated in different cultures over the past 23 years. We have never had the opportunity to stay in our birthland, we have seen different homes, filled it with our presence and emptied it when it was time for us to leave for a new city.

Every time we vacate a house, it’s always surprising for me to feel sad and strange considering how many times I’ve done it. Stripping away all the homeliness and essence we built in that house. Packing away everything we’ve ever owned into boxes.

Whenever it’s time for us to move to a new city, I always get excited for the possibilities. A new home, a new room. The second we move in, I plan out where the bed, the desk and the wardrobe go. And how to decorate my walls with posters, fairy lights and such things. It stems from wanting to feel at home as soon as possible. I think of the days I’d come back to my room after a heavy day and relish in the cosiness, I made sure it felt like my safe haven.

The starting point of attachment was always my room. I’d start from there and make my way through the house. The hall would be where I would lay about on the couch watching TV, or reading my book, sometimes watching late night movies with my family. The Kitchen is where I discovered my love for cooking and revelled in the structure of that house’s kitchen that aided my enjoyment in the cooking process. My parent’s room had the AC which was essential during the Summers and some of my favourite memories at home are of us hanging out in their room just talking about life. Once our dog joined our family, he would jump up on the bed and roll about asking for belly rubs. What a lucky dog, three people to rub his belly. And the balconies, where there were abundant plants, bless my parents for being into gardening, I have beautiful memories of staring at the night sky among the greenery, of catching the morning sunlight and watching the sun set into the evening hours.

We have lived in every house for five years each, and it took two of those years to get accustomed to the idea that this is not just my house, but my home. Then for the next three years, it felt like I had always lived here. Like this is where I belong. And suddenly one day, it’s time to move.

You can almost always tell when the phone call comes and from my mom’s tone that we’re leaving. I don’t have to pester her to finish the call and tell me. Within days of receiving the news, we’re suddenly emptying the fridge and cleaning out all the old stuff from the wardrobe. Packing away important things into our bags and preparing to leave this home.

The final day, you don’t even realise it’s your final day. It’s like any other day, you have to remember to realise that you’re leaving the next day and this home will be empty soon. At the forefront, there’s excitement about moving to a new place, with a better house waiting for us. And that takes over any other emotion, you’re eagerly waiting for it all to be packed in and taken away.

But once the house is emptied, once the halls and the kitchens and the rooms are devoid of any sign of human habitation. You feel so empty, because suddenly you’re neither here nor there. You don’t have a home, you’re actually homeless for the next couple of hours. And all you can think about is - I want to go home.

But where is home really? If all this time you’ve been packing and unpacking your life from boxes, where is home? Some have the fortune to call their hometown their home, but for people like me who have never lived there, there’s no home. What ensues is a lifelong search for stability. You just want to settle down in a place and make it your home and not move from there ever.

All of these emotions stem from recently having to move to a new city, it’s much closer to our hometown and I wasn’t really attached to my previous house, in fact I couldn’t wait to get out of there. But seeing it empty at the end of the day was emotional for me. After all, I did make it my home for some time even unwillingly.

Now that I’m an adult, I would love to settle down in a nice metropolitan city with a 1bhk flat all to myself. And you’d best bet, it’ll be the homeliest home ever to be.