Cherishing the Little Things When the Big Picture Doesn't Do It
By: Hannah P. Galeone
As I pulled up the driveway, I was instantly calmed by the familiar comfort of being home. Clean country air and the sound of gravel crunching under my tires flowed through the open windows of my car. But as I continued up the drive, I felt a ping of sadness because no one would be inside waiting for me. My parents were off visiting their respective sets of parents. The house was dark and as I approached the gravel circle near the front door, the grass filled with tiny glittering circles reflecting in my high beams. They’re just the eyes of my cats. I parked my car and got my bags. “Hi baby kitties,” I said in my best baby voice as I walked by the three of them.
I opened the front door and the familiar smell of wood floors and my mom’s recently burned lavender candle filled my nostrils. But it was quiet. Hey, I guess you can finally play music really loud without bothering anyone, I thought out loud. But I felt myself wishing there was someone home to bother. I put my stuff down, which immediately attracted the attention of curious feline noses, and I collapsed on the couch. I wanted to listen to the silence. My dad’s bush hog wasn’t humming off in the distance; my mom’s typing didn’t resonate from downstairs -- it was different. All I could hear was the buzzing refrigerator and the occasional pit-pat-pit-pat of cat paws tapping the floor.
As of late, I have been under a lot of stress from a range of things going on in life. And it wasn’t the “drink some tea and text a friend” kind either, it was the “I really want to talk to my mom” kind. But she wasn’t there. I felt saddened by this, but I was also becoming used to feeling more alone. “Alone” wasn’t quite the right way to describe how I felt but it was close. I guess I was truly starting to feel the distance between me and the people I loved most. And it felt odd. I craved the comfort of home.
But why did I want to be there? What did home really mean to me? I started to think about the sentimentality of a home and why we become attached to them. I was curious about the comfort we feel when we’re at home and if it was tied to physical locations, emotions, or both.
Home, Comfort, and Connections
The concept of the home is something that has long been associated with the feeling of comfort. In his article “The Definition of Home,” Verlyn Klinkenborg says that “[a] home is a place so profoundly familiar you don’t even have to notice it.” When this comfortable space is far away from us or we can’t visit as often as desired, we become homesick.
Homesickness is when a person experiences emotional distress because they are in an unfamiliar environment or separated from supportive friends and family. For me, it was the latter. In her article, “The Science of Homesickness,” Elizabeth Van Brocklin says that the feeling is “mostly loneliness, combined with a sense of feeling out of place and wanting to return to familiar, supportive environments.” That was exactly what I was feeling. The long periods of time that I spend at school make me miss being around my family because with them I always know I have support.
I pondered my relationship with my own house on Castle Mountain and why it was sentimental to me. The house itself is beautiful -- a clean, open concept take on a traditional farmhouse with an L-shaped porch. The house is white, and the porch is grey. Adirondack chairs are scattered in the grass around the fire pit and the moon was shining down on the picnic table. The furniture, the farm equipment, the house itself, the outbuildings -- everything is less than five years old. When we moved to Virginia in 2011, my mom adopted a newfound love for the concept of purging. She loves a good clutter free environment. Everything had to go. Oh? You really liked that thing? Well, I chucked it. I’d heard that all too many times. We were on the warpath for a fresh start.
But because everything in the home is so new, I have to admit that the house itself means very little to me. I really haven’t spent very long in any one place, to be honest. At almost 23 years old, I have already lived in 4 states and 8 different houses. My parents love a change of scenery and their jobs gave them the ability to move around a decent amount. My lack of attachment to one specific place made me think that was the reason I wasn’t attached to my current home. Maybe I haven’t given it enough time yet.
But as I delved deeper into my quandary, I thought about the structure of the house itself, the concept of home, and the things within my house. I was connected to the “stuff” but not the thing holding the stuff. According to a study by Kerry Anne McBain (2010), “we find both visual and narrative traces of our existence [in our possessions].” Our possessions “connect us symbolically to others, to a shared past, and a shared future and in some cases differentiate us from others.” They give a stable and familiar feeling when we look at them because of their ability to make us remember. Looking at items that are important to us allow us to recalls moments or times that were important to us. Their association with the feelings of warmth, familiarity, routine, and comfort allow us to feel those things when we look at or touch them.
Little Details
I was tied to the little things around my home --the pictures on the dresser that chronicle the growth of my brother and me, the sleeping cats on the couch and the affectionately named “cat cot,” each have a special story. Even the wooden bowl holding my dad’s truck keys, a crumpled tube of Blistex, and a broken Bluetooth earpiece was special to me. My mom’s tortoiseshell readers and phone charger sat on the marble countertop next to a container of cat treats -- specifically “Temptations.” These little details are why I love home.
My bedroom is where I’m most comfortable. The room is a small square, with four huge windows, and an off-white rustic chandelier hangs in the center of the ceiling. The first thing you see when you open my door is a copy of Van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night that hangs in between the windows. My grandparents gave it to me after I visited the site of the painting’s inspiration. On the opposite wall is a “BMW Parking Only Sign” that my brother gave me. You have to have something a little outlandish, right? My bed is nothing special, but I love it -- comfier than anything and the perfect size.
The adjacent corner is truly where I come to life. My white, wooden desk is pushed into the corner and is piled high with years worth of trinkets, picture frames, papers, diplomas, and figurines. My desk isn’t a chaotic mess, it’s a real mess. But something about all of the tiny and generally trivial things scattered across the desk’s surface felt so… right. The big mason jar on the shelf is from a batch of strawberry moonshine given to me summer 2016. My best friend gave me the silver and gold fox as a token of his appreciation for helping him move. The anecdotes are endless.
While I would have liked spending the weekend with my family, I realized that my home was actually perfect. Even when I’m there alone with the incessant refrigerator humming and smell of wood floors, there are hints of my family’s presence there too. I found my sense of home in the little things. Even when the house is a lonely space and I myself am feeling isolated, I can still experience a relief from life’s stresses and anxieties when I’m there.
Learning to love my home meant learning why the concept of home is special and why we as humans cherish it. I’m not attached to my house because it’s my home, but because of the associations that I have with the space. It’s where I’m comfortable, supported, and feel the most at ease and the little things are what mean the most to me.
