Coming home

Have your parents ever threatened to move out and not tell you, so that when you come home from school at Christmas vacation you would open the door to some unsuspecting elderly couple who now use your room to house their collection of antique dolls? Have they ever threatened to change the locks and not give you a key? Maybe you, like me, were so busy when you lived at home that they threatened to rent out your room at a weekly rate just so it would get some use.

These threats were mostly lighthearted attempts to make me think twice about going out, spending a summer perpetually out of town or even living in a residence hall instead of at home.

Fun and innocent joking around, right?

Wrong.

One month after I moved to the Hilltop, my parents decided to sell my room. In fact, they decided to sell my whole house, my childhood home. Not only did they close the door on every childhood memory I had, they even had the audacity to move into an apartment that didn’t have a room for me! How could they? How would I ever want to come home? “Home.” What would “home” be? Certainly not this apartment that wanted nothing to do with me! Didn’t they know that home is where the heart is? Didn’t they know I need a home to come to for rest, care and shelter? Didn’t they understand how much I needed this home?

Of course they did. They knew that home is not a place. A house is not a home until the people who inhabit it make it one. They knew that the reason our house was so special to us was because of the home created there.

Many times, when students are away from their family for the first time, their perception of home gets skewed. Some view their home as a place of bondage they have finally escaped from. Some view their home as a laundromat, restaurant and money tree, while some, like me, expect for life to never change at home. I subconsciously expected my family’s world to stop when I wasn’t there.

Others choose to idealize their home They see it as a land flowing with milk and honey, a paradise of sorts. If they could only make it home this weekend, they could make it through the next week. Often, this view causes frustration when the family doesn’t live up to the standards the student has created.

These extremes are dangerous. Somewhere, there is a middle ground.

Somewhere between hating it, idealizing it and taking advantage of it, is a healthy view of the homes we have left behind.

My skewed perception might have kept me from a crucial knowledge of what my home really is. I have learned, however, that “coming home” is about my mom’s hug, my dad’s lap and my brother’s laugh. These things are not contingent on the type of roof we have over our heads or whether or not I have a room.

Before we go home for summer vacation, let’s evaluate what we expect to find there. My advice to you? Take a look at your perception, figure out what you can change, and call your mom.