The Deeper Meanings of Home

John Hallwas

            As our friends in town know, Garnette and I are now [in 2011]settled in a 90-year-old brick house on Edwards Street---a house that required a good deal of redecorating inside and lawn work outside. During our two-year transition from a newer home outside of town, on the shore of Spring Lake, to a temporary rental place and finally to this historic house, which was lived in years ago by the Holmes, Bacon, and Rudolph families, I have reflected a good deal on the meanings of home in our culture.

            Actually, I’ve been interested in the topic of “home,” which is deeply related to community, for many years, so I have slowly acquired dozens of books on the subject. One of the oldest I have is Walter T. Griffin’s 630-page volume “The Houses of Our Country” (1882), which is sub-titled, “the Centers of Moral and Religious Influence; the Crystals of Society; the Nuclei of National Character.” As that suggests, he recognized the deep interconnection between home life and such matters as morality, religion, social commitment, and American values.

            It is no accident that these factors now do not have a deep impact on some people, in an era marked by growing rootlessness, many fractured relationships, often separated generations, and excessive individualism---all of which I have discussed in other articles for “The Voice.” Home life is under siege.

            As Irene Cieraad points out in her introduction to a collection of studies called “At Home” (2006), today “the home’s aura of sharing and communality is likely to conflict with the individual projects of household members.” Indeed, never before have so many people spent so few hours at home, and when they are home, individuals are often separated from others by involvement with technology (TV, cell phones, computers, etc.). Emotional connection, or a sense of integration with one’s immediate social context, is often sacrificed.

            But there is more to this issue. One of the best recent books on the positive psychological significance of homes is “House as a Mirror of Self” (1995) by Clare Cooper Marcus. As she points out, “A home fulfills many needs: a place of self-expression, a vessel of memories, a refuge from the outside world, a cocoon where one can feel nurtured. . . .”

            Aside from those common inner benefits, she also emphasizes that a home can “help us become who we are meant to be.” And that is because “we create our immediate environment and then contemplate it and are worked on by it.” In other words, a home that one builds or renovates or decorates is a symbolic reflection of the self, which then exerts a reciprocal influence on the dweller, fostering certain perceptions and attitudes. So, over time, home can become a place of significant self-growth.

            Although Marcus does not refer to it, “The House on Mango Street” (1984), an award-winning collection of fictional vignettes by Sandra Cisneros, beautifully illustrates the inner impact of a home that is not self-created or psychologically supportive. The narrator longs to leave her family’s home, characterized by poverty, humiliation, and restriction---symbolizing her present identity---for a better house of her own, where she can establish a dignified, positive sense of selfhood.      

            Associated with that kind of drive for self-improvement is the modern quest for a deeper, more centered spiritual life, in an era when so much activity seems shallow, contradictory, and meaningless. That a home can foster such a quest is demonstrated, for example, in May Sarton’s “House by the Sea” (1977), an account of her spiritual awakening in a much-appreciated new home. The wealthy, respected Sarton is, in fact, the opposite of the poor, restricted narrator in “The House on Mango Street.”  She reminds us that living well, and maintaining a positive sense of identity, is much easier in the right home environment.   

            “House by the Sea” and other Sarton books, especially “Recovering” (1980) and “At Seventy” (1984), reveal that a satisfying home can become a kind of sacred place, opening one’s self to a greater, deeper, more meaningful experience---and prompting a sense of wholeness. And that, in turn, can help the dweller confront life’s challenges, like illness, aging, and the loss of loved ones.

           For Garnette and myself, although we loved the beautiful lakefront on Shorewood Drive, several miles from Macomb, we felt that it was time to move into town, where convenient access to everything would be an increasing advantage as we got older, and walking to places like Compton Park and the courthouse square could become an enjoyable routine. That an historic, Georgian Revival house, with a park-like yard, became available made it easier to leave the place we had designed and built on Spring Lake. And that the house on Edwards Street  needed some restoration and renovation gave us a chance to both contribute to the residential heritage of our town and personalize the home in some meaningful ways---including the designing of a new-but-traditional-looking white kitchen for Garnette and the creation of a library-office, lined with bookshelves, where I continue to write.     

            So, renovated homes, well-kept homes, carefully decorated homes, personalized homes are not simply signs of materialism, social pretension, or narrow self-concern---although they can be. More commonly, they are a reflection of something positive going on inside the dweller, the creation of a meaningful personal environment, which suggests his or her relationship to people and purposes, activities and outlooks, that continue to matter.