A home away from home
HOME is a deceptively simple yet evocative word. Simply put, it’s an emotion in itself. Our earliest memories of home are mostly about mom’s warm caress, welcoming smell of home-cooked meals, laughter, friends, family and carefree days. These memories sustain us as we move away from home.
Leaving home is a rite of passage for us all. In another age, boys left home in search of a better future and girls left their parents’ home because it was seemingly so destined.
But in the last few decades, as the world has shrunk metaphorically, many more young people are moving across cities, countries and continents. For this peripatetic generation, the notion of a home has become so much more complex.
There’s the home they leave behind. There’s the home they set up in cities far away. They are inextricably linked to the home they grew up in, but they also become attached to their little nests thousands of miles away.
If they are sharing the space with buddies or a roommate, a little bit of each one of them goes into building that shared nook. The meals cooked together and the humdrum of a shared daily life create lasting bonds in a new city or a foreign land.
If they are flying solo, setting up a space of their own is a journey in itself. Assembling furniture on their own is as big a triumph as landing a job! Adventures with a hob or a fridge gone awry, particularly on a weekend, are lessons in crisis management. Add to it limited local language skills and life becomes even more interesting.
Moms are always loved, but now they are treated as divas. Suddenly, the children realise that running a home, even for one person and juggling a job, is an act which their moms seem to ace almost effortlessly.
They become house-proud. Some have a row of beautiful flowers blooming on their window, others are content on keeping the solitary plant on their table alive. Some become pet parents and learn life lessons in caring for another soul. Many of them, both girls and boys, become adroit cooks and critically judge the food when they are back home!
Recipes, groceries, bed linen and weekend chores become part of their conversation. Sometimes, they enjoy adulting, and at other times they feel overwhelmed and wish to run back home!
They enjoy their trips back home, but also love to talk about their homes back in the cities they call their own now.
As parents and a generation senior to this lot, it’s refreshing to see them become responsible adults in more ways than one. I only wish that stereotypes and the baggage of expectations don’t bog them down as some of them choose partners and move into the next phase of life. The responsibility is ours as much as theirs. Let us not box them into roles which a wife or a husband is supposed to perform. Let this not be just a phase but the foundation of a happy thriving home with someone special.
Musings