My Summer Home

I feel like I’m back in elementary school telling my brand new class “something exciting I did this summer”- at the request of the teacher. Typically, I talked about my family vacation- whether it be to the Jersey Shore or the Pocono’s. Most kids picked their vacation to share with the class. 

It’s obvious- going somewhere new is a shock to an eight year old’s system in the best way possible. It (was) anticipatory- discussed in the house since spring: “we can’t sign the kids up for camps the last week of July because we’re going away.” It’s memorable and maybe you even got a souvenir to hold onto the memory- sporting a crisp white shirt with your name graffiti’d on it in neon. Or the memory is being “buried” in the backyard in the form of a hermit crab. See, the hermit crab was never meant to go on vacation (or have its shell be painted like a soccer ball). It’s in the name- Hermit- someone who stays home, yet you brought it on a vacation to your home.

If an eight year old happened to read this blog they might say: “my house isn’t a vacation house.” A fifteen year old might say: “no one on earth “vacations” in my hometown.” And my actual readers would agree with both statements. When they go “home” or even stay “home” for a bit, they’re “visiting their parents” or maybe broke up with their live-in partner, or read my very first blog post and decided to temporarily move home out of necessity (all the cool adults are doing it). 

Well class, this past summer I had the unique experience of going on vacation to my hometown, and staying in my childhood home. I call it a vacation in the less romantic, adult version- a break from work. The stay was limited- I’d be home for three months (long vacation, I know). And I would give myself permission to relax (you’re laughing right now if you know me). Lucky for you guys the souvenirs I brought back were new thoughts & theories on life (I wish it was the graffiti shirt, too).

The first realization I had led me to referring to my stay as a vacation. Before, I told people “I’m going home for a bit between leases and have a bunch of weddings to attend.” The latter is true, the former is a half-truth. At some point in our adulthood we realize home is no longer home. I’ve had feelings of this in college, post-college, and even while living at home in my twenties. The feeling that your childhood home is more rooted in the past. It may even feel smaller, though it’s most likely physically bigger than your current place. It’s somewhere that is no longer yours. Even with those feelings, when I stepped into my home during those breaks from college, I felt “home.” 

That visceral safeness you can’t explain. Sure, you want to kill your parents after a week now that you’ve lived on your own. But muscle memory quickly has you moving through the house like it’s still yours. It’s not a vacation. In fact, you probably have a vacation planned that departs from this house. This is the red pin that your GPS suggests as your destination. The one that screams “you are here.” The scream gets louder when you go to a hometown bar with your high school friends and that one song comes on. “We are here” not just “I.”

In your twenties, if you move to the same city as many of your current friends (from college, high school, your college friends’ friends from high school) that feeling continues. Living “home” during a lot of this time was also a unique situation. I was close enough to the city that I essentially experienced that trajectory. I don’t know how it is for the person who spends their twenties in a completely foreign city with no one they know.

I can only speak to the people in my experience. And for us (at least for me) the change of home seemed to come with age, not location. Around twenty-eight the screams get quieter, because less people are there to sing that song at the bar. Friends get married, friends move to the burbs, friends get more serious about their career and have less time to be a “we.” 

When I moved to LA last year, I felt the shift beginning to happen. It’s not just the logistics of people moving further a part, but also a shift that happens in yourself. We’re constantly changing, and in our late twenties our city might start to feel small like our childhood bedroom did during college. Perhaps we don’t click with certain friends anymore, or we start to see our experiences as stale, or we feel a restlessness that can’t be fed in our current residence. It’s a mental growth spurt.

So when I returned home this summer, I immediately experienced a weird dichotomy of picking up where I left off, but in a place that’s changed. Some of the “picking up” felt strange because I had changed too. That’s when I realized I was on a vacation. Sad, yes- I can go on for pages about the bittersweetness of change- but it’s nothing you don’t know yourself. And vacation is supposed to be fun god dammit!

It was fun. If I were to share with the class, I’d specifically talk about the weddings. Ironically, the events that feel most like home. We are singing that one song, we are surrounded by the scattered friends in one place, and we are acting like we’re twenty-two again. And of course, we get to celebrate a love. I was lucky enough to have a couple celebrations that involved a love between two friends. Those ones, particularly transportive to the visceral home. 

Now would be a great segue to discuss the changes regarding romantic relationships at 30. But I’ll keep it brief. It’s an interesting age because you have friends married with a baby, friends getting engaged, friends who are no where close to wanting to settle down, and everywhere in between. It’s obviously a contributing factor to the dynamics shifting. My less obvious “theory” in terms of this has to with my favorite topic- the timeline. 

In our early twenties, when a friend gets a significant other it feels less serious. They could end up being that guy who was “around” for a period of time. So there isn’t a huge separation between those in relationships and those single. It can change at any moment. In our late twenties, however, a relationship seems serious (either because our friend literally met their match or because the timeline is fooling all of us to believe this will be the one). Either way, we don’t view the guy as someone on vacation with his bags half packed. He is here. And whether you love him or hate him, it’s more of a solid change, rather than a fleeting one. 

So the singles seem more single and the relationshipees seem further away. Like at the weddings when all of us singles flock to the bar while the couples slow dance. According to the “timeline” a thirty year old should be on that dance floor, they should be able to pay for an expensive one-bedroom because they should be splitting the rent. And those on the dance floor are bound to the person their slow-dancing with, even if they’ve only been together for a short time. We may not consciously think these things- I actually think our generation is beginning to change these norms. However, it’s rippling under the surface, creating a more palpable disconnection.

Okay so my last realization on “what I did this summer” is a bit sentimental. When I walked around my neighborhood over the last few months, memories came flooding back. Neighborhood nights, catching fireflies, playing with my friends in our yards, getting water ice with my family. Apologies to all the parents who spend money herding their kids around Disney World, but the days and nights spent between vacations and camps are the most vivid in my mind. Unless I’m looking at a picture of the time we went to Hilton Head, in which I think “oh that was nice,” I might forget to include it in sharing all my summers from childhood. 

You only get that nostalgic, gut-chilling feeling from moments that happened at home when you were eight. They weren’t marked with a graffiti t-shirt, but you lost that shirt anyway. These moments mark themselves in a place you can’t lose them. There’s a longing, melancholic mood when reminiscing on these moments. Because I can travel to Hilton Head, but I can’t travel back in time. There will never be as many voices singing that song unless we all agree to return home. And the bar we’re singing at has been renovated and is filled with ten new crops of legal drinkers. 

So if you’re 30 and you’re feeling lost with the inevitable changes happening around you, to that I say- look inward. Even if it seems like you’re the only person who hasn’t made a major life change in the last decade doesn’t mean you haven’t grown. You might feel like you don’t belong at the place with the red pin, but you can move that pin, or stay and figure out what makes that pin yours with who you are now. 

And if you’re eight, appreciate more than just your summer vacation. We get it, your front hair piece will be in a wrap around for the next month. You’ll choose it as your first day of school anecdote, but the stuff you’ll remember down the line is the stuff that happens in between.

To whoever else is reading this too- the hermit crab who hasn’t been chosen to leave the boardwalk because the store-owner painted their shell beige, the college student who doesn’t have “summers home” because they live home, the lost 28 year old, etc: the moments that define you aren’t usually the ones people are sharing with the class.