A friend commented on my post last week about home and how he thought that nothing would feel like his childhood home until he was stable enough to stay somewhere and maybe have a family of his own. That something about the homey feeling of childhood had to do with all of the collected memories of that place that created a solid foundation.

I think that continuity does play a role in the feeling of home. Maybe that is why Baltimore feels like home to me – it is the first place I have lived in my adult life that I have not been continuously thinking about moving out of. Even if my apartments have not been continuous, I do think that I will be here for some time and have been working to build stability in my life so that I am able to.

After childhood, at least in the socio-economic background I come from, it was off to college.  College dorms provided temporary housing, but never felt like home, and with only a year in each new dorm, it never seemed worth it to work toward making it one.

I don’t think that continuity is necessary to find home though. I think it has more to do with stability or safety. I think to be at home one needs to feel stable and safe. What does this mean though?  Many do not find this in their childhood homes, even if the continuity is there so I don’t think that it can be tied to that. Home can be a temporary feeling. Maybe it is something like peace. It is something that we must constantly work toward or it is lost. It is not something given in any circumstance, but something that one can choose if one is lucky.