Going “Home”-Tess Bates

The end of the school year is always a challenging time. I'm not talking about wrapping up classes or trying to raise grades. I'm talking about packing up and going home. This is my second year that when May rolls around, I have to put all my possessions in boxes and move out of places that I've come to call “home.”

For many college students, “home” is back at their parent's house where they spend the summers and breaks. It is the place where they can go back and see old friends and do laundry for free, as well as take advantage of home cooked meals. It is the place where they can rest and feel at peace with comfortability.

To be honest, I don't know where my home is. My situation is rather sticky and it has left me with a haunting question of how I define home. I grew up in suburb of Chicago for the first 18 years of my life. My mom moved to Vermont the summer before my freshman year of college. My dad still lives in the Midwest, along with one of my siblings and my extended family. I guess, “home” for me will always be Warrenville, where I grew up. But it's getting harder to define. If you ask me where I call home, I don't know if I could tell you.

I like the nostalgic feeling of going “home” to Chicago, because it's familiar: it's what I know. I don't mind going to Vermont, because it is the “home” where all of my possessions are kept. I'm starting to feel that my permanent “home” is in California. This is where I want to be, spend the rest of my life, place all my earthly possessions in one house.

But I can't help feeling that these aren't my homes, there's something much deeper that is tugging at my heart. Maybe it's heaven. Maybe I don't feel rested or completely grounded anywhere because I have been uprooted. Maybe it's because this isn't my final refuge.

Again, I don't think I could tell you. But don't put your entire life into this home or that house, because it's not the last place where you'll live. And maybe we all need to be uprooted to truly evaluate how we view the sense of “home” that we've grown up with. And for those whose hearts are wandering and trying to find rest, like mine: we'll figure it out, together if we have to.

In the meantime, I need to get back to packing up my apartment for the summer.

Namaste,

Tess Bates