Home
How does a grain of sand discover its home?
What defines a home? Everyone deserves one, however the idea of a home comes in different, even opposing forms. For some, it comes as simply as the house they grew up in or the town in which they attended high school. Other cultures value family over everything, having extended family members living in their home or as neighbors. Others find their home as they follow their dreams, whether it be falling in love with a city where they landed their dream job or travelling around the world and clinging to the impermanence of one. And some find a home within a person they love. It is different for everyone, but I believe it is a word that has not been given enough thought. To me, it is the place or feeling that makes up a part of someone’s identity. It is a grain of sand taken from Montauk that now sits in a jar on my desk that has finally been given a purpose: remembrance. It is almost too conventional to assume that everyone was raised with a home since childhood or that a grain of sand has been on the same beach its whole life. Some people, like me, are on a lifetime search for what it means to be “at home.” I do not believe that I have truly felt that encapsulating feeling, comfortable, with no need to wonder about all the other places I’d rather be. I feel that I have not only been on a search for the feeling of home itself, but also for what a home truly means to me.
A grain of sand. Letting it slip between your fingers one could say that this beach in Montauk is the home for it. But where did it come from? Where did it start? Where has it travelled? What has it seen? Maybe it is a segment of a rock from a nearby breakwater that eroded off years ago, or maybe it has travelled through the tides and fish and boats to make it across an entire ocean. We cannot assume, we cannot guess, we will never know. And why can’t the sand know either? Why is it oblivious to its movement throughout its lifetime, mindlessly letting itself be pushed around the shores? It is controlled by the tides and abused by humans’ feet crushing it. And still, alone, it will never comprehend the feeling of a home.
To me, as I sat on the trillions of grains of sand every summer, letting them stick to my body, the sand was my medium and, thus, my home. My hands grasped clumps of it as I shaped them into sand sculptures and castles. I created a new life for the hermit crabs I would collect and place inside my structures. I loved decorating the face of my castles with the prettiest shells I could find. It was almost as if I took this sand and gave it another reason to be there. I gave it a feeling of a home, not just a castle to reside in, but purpose and importance. I cared for the sand, I gently patted it down until it was strong enough to hold an entire second story. The sand was no longer just thrown around by the wind or the water, but it was treated and loved, all the things one should feel in a home. I used to work with the sand until sunset, until my wet skin would be covered in goosebumps and the tide would finally be rolling in. Why did I feel so much more comfortable in such a simplistic place as the beach than in my own house? I did not quite understand it then, but I do now. I was far away from society, judgement and hastiness. I was nearly alone, able to think for myself and have no other thoughts besides mine. I was my strongest then, until I would have to return home and join in with the rest of my family the substanceless conversation at the dinner table.
Humans seem to believe that they know exactly what a home means. Type it in Google and you will read that it is “the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.” And maybe for some that is true, I know one day I want a home I can call permanent, but how could that possibly apply to everyone? The answer is, it doesn’t. It is a privilege for most people to have a comfortable place to go home to for holidays, and it can be a feeling of love and happiness and freedom. However, where I come from, everyone seems to have that typical definition of a home, and they’re all very similar: a colonial house on a dirt road in a historic, but now wealthy town where most have a perfect dog running around the yard, children wear Ralph Lauren from the time they were a toddler and believe that that is normal, and kids can come back from college and jump right back into that Mercedes that they got for their sixteenth birthday. It’s a brainwashing type of town, one that eliminates your ability to see outside of it. People grow up there thinking that everyone else lives like this too. I guess my problem was that I could never understand this. I cannot say I was raised too different than some of the other kids in my town, but my brain must have been wired differently because I was disgusted by it nearly my whole life and did not even realize it. It took me halfway through this homogeneous public high school to leave and go to Catholic school a few towns over. It wasn’t too much better, but it was a relief to be around people who came from different family incomes and cultural backgrounds. At least they did not all live this picture perfect life. A home meant different things to them, and I was exposed to families who valued love and support over everything. Upon coming to this realization about where I came from, I knew I had to leave as fast as possible. I learned that home is a part of one’s life that completes it, whether it be a place, a person or a feeling. Without one, I don’t believe a person could feel truly satisfied and fulfilled. Home is what allows someone to be their full self without thinking twice about it.
It has taken me nearly twenty years of my life to understand what it feels like to be at home, and I am not even there yet. What it takes is leaving it for a while, or leaving what you had always thought was home, to discover what it is to you. It is that unfamiliarity that allows you to better see where you came from. I left home last year and have never felt more like myself since. I discovered that a home makes you who you are, it brings out the you in you more than ever before. Some people get to grow up in that place, but some people, like me, have to find it. I was a grain of sand before last year. In my hometown I was controlled, pushed around by the tides. I had waves filling up my ears, I could not hear myself. I tried to speak and air bubbles came out and no one could understand me. Every time I thought I was getting closer to the shore, another wave would take me, then another, and another. I knew that that beach I grew up on was not where I belonged. I travelled along that shore searching, and all I needed was some guidance. Finally, at the end of high school, I met someone, out of nowhere it felt like, and he pushed me forward, provided a lull in the waves for me to go ahead and finish it on my own. It is with this person that I have been able to find the home I need. So we ran, and we are still running as fast as we can.
And then we ran to New York City, a place where I felt so invisible it was freeing for a minute or two. I had just escaped the harshness of an environment that did not approve of who I was. But after a few weeks, I began to feel trapped. I’m congested in this thick air, in the lack of personal space, I can hardly see in front of me. Sometimes I walk around in the middle of the night and remember how wonderful it is to be here, but that’s only because I feel alone enough to connect with my surroundings. I can actually see in front of me. The morning after, however, as I stress about what’s next, repelling the constant movement, I find myself running past people, I get my commutes over with as fast as possible, I curse under my breath as people get in my way, and I hate feeling like this. I’ve grown up needing to take in all the nature I can get, smelling the air, walking slowly but swiftly at my own pace, and avoiding people when I can. It sounds funny now that it is all on paper, why did I come here? I’m sacrificing my comfort for my education. However, this city has two sides to it, one that’s too busy for my personality I cannot handle it sometimes, but it also has the constant inspiration and opportunity I’ve been looking for. Maybe home comes in stages throughout life. I do not feel all the way there, but I’m closer. And New York, I’m sure, will help me get to where I belong. I’ve discovered throughout these different stages in my life that a home, for me, will not come right away, but each place I am in will change my needs ever so slightly to eventually guide me to the perfect place where I can stay.
So the moment I sat on that beach in Montauk collecting the sand into this jar, I felt at home. I saw the ocean, I felt the sand on my body and the sun warming my skin, I smelled the salt in the air, the freshest air I could smell, and most importantly, I was myself. The beach eliminates my self-awareness in the most freeing way possible. It’s funny that home can feel so far away from the house you grew up in, that it can have nearly nothing to do with your childhood or your bedroom or your pet dog. And the journey that one can go through to find their sense of home can go from none at all, to a lifetime search. A grain of sand may never feel this, it may never grow legs to bring itself home. But it deserves the feet of those who need them, it needs my feet walking through it just as I need it to walk through. The sand has become a part of me, and I have become a part of it, making a home.
