Recent experiences have led me to place my mind on what is home.
I don’t recall the first place I lived, so my only life has been in the house I now stay is home.
I went to live in Montreal with my mother and sister to do a program for autism, living for two years in houses that belonged to other people. I don’t remember feeling that the houses I stayed at were home.
Of course, my mother loaded the other people’s houses with objects from my real home, bringing a moving van filled with special items which reminded us of our life in America. Yet looking back, it seemed as though the real home was only life with us all together, the days we were joined by my dad. And on those weekends the house was almost home.
My sister has now moved to far away cities to study, and is home less and less. Home has now a vacant space and I am forced to grieve this loss of what I know to be the feeling of us. My grandfather left the world last summer and my grandmother can’t seem to find a sense of home.
I’m hearing a lot of talk about where we with autism should live.
One of the great facts missing in the dialog is how to build a true home. Home is more than a holding dwelling of our possessions. Home is the world where all we know of life as a person who is loved exists.
When the focus is only on locations, we are forgetting that in looking for one’s sense of knowing we are home, we need first to fill that space with love.
