What Makes a Home?

For our last hoorah before we started the new school year, we spent a day in Chicago. We’ve been wanting to move to Chicago for a year now, but things haven’t quite lined up yet. So we have to wait. It’s tough to wait for something when you know it feels right. In the waiting, doubt can creep in. Settling feels easier than uprooting your family and starting all over again. But then you remember you can’t go out to get dessert after 9 pm and the Filipino population isn’t big enough to bring Easter Sunday to your town’s theaters. 

Needs.

Wants. 

The makings of a home.

Our search for relocating happened at a time when many Americans were doing the same. Whether it was the stress of the pandemic that had city people running for the small town life or to find a community where you weren’t alienated by your politics, many Americans went in search for what they really wanted for their home. But the search for home has been present first since I was a teenager growing up in East Tennessee. Then when I married my East Idahoan husband, we knew early on the difficulties of raising a multicultural family in either of our home states. So we’ve been searching, homeless for the past 13 years.

Here’s an excerpt from a piece I wrote after our Chicago day-trip:

Don’t forget the joys you felt in that one day. You felt home was possible there. 

You felt at home when Jo welcomed you into his restaurant with the familiar Filipino greeting, “Upo, upo!” as he gestures to the seats at the bar. Your son sees the Hot Wheels Jeepney displayed in original packaging at Boonie Foods and he whispers to you, “Mom, I want that car!” He may only recognize the Hot Wheels logo and not the Jeepney, but our culture is present the everyday American life. Here it would be and the burden of carrying the sole teaching of Filipino culture is lightened. 

Right here, A multicultural home is possible.

It is possible when we splash around in the art of Spanish artist Jaume Plensa in a Mid-west American city. And when we are done with our afternoon play at Crown Fountain, we need not go far to once again eat our food and hear our language. A walk down the street brings us to Jollibee (or as my son pronounces it, Jellibean). Here we can be our multicultural family. And we can see others do the same.

What makes a place feel like home for you?