Open Hood
Home, according to Merriam-Webster, has many definitions. One of them is “one’s place of residence”. Another is “a familiar or usual setting”. A third: “a place of origin”. There are more than ten different definitions but I decided to narrow it down. Home is a very broad word, but simultaneously can also be a very specific word. So, what is the right definition of home? Home, in my opinion, is not a still, absolute place but more of something that evolves and changes, where you obtain experiences and grow. There are as much unique homes as there are different humans. An individual can consider their home to be their apartment, or neighborhood, or even country. Depending on their home, it can affect how they act and view certain points.
Many people do consider their home to be their country of birth, also known as their mother country, however I do not share those feelings. I was born in South Korea, but moved to the U.S. when I was a one year old and have been living at my current home ever since. I don’t feel connected to Korea the way that others feel about their mother country or homeland. Home is something you should have personal feelings towards, something you never want to change because it is a part of you.
As I walk through my home, I notice how much has changed. I have seen my home evolve. I have seen the construction of new buildings that have replaced old buildings that were torn down a couple years prior. There was a house next to my apartment that was destroyed and replaced by a newer house. Every day I would come back from school and hear the noise of construction. CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK and RIZZZZ, the sounds of drills and hammers running through my head that was a fun experience. I have seen new roads being built and new trees being planted on the streets. I would consider myself to be privileged in a sense because living in my home is very convenient. There is the subway station that has the M and R trains (which conveniently also stop at popular stations where you can transfer to other trains, such as: 74th Roosevelt, Queens Plaza, 59th Lexington, 42nd Street Times Square, and others.) and two malls where I spent most of my time with my friends since it was so easily accessible (Queens Center Mall and the newly constructed one in Rego Park), my elementary school is literally one block from my apartment and my middle school is 4 blocks. Since I lived near school most of my life, going into high school was a big deal because I was required to take the subway to attend school. Learning the MTA map and what and where the unique trains and the stations, filled with different and inspired culture, was a pain to deal with. I was never good at looking at maps and memorizing directions. However, Manhattan is very plain and simple. It is a grid where the streets increase/decrease vertically and avenues ascend/descend horizontally. There is Elmhurst Hospital a couple of blocks away, where I went when I broke my arm in second grade. There is the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) that goes across Broadway and if it is quiet enough in my apartment, I can hear the distant sound of the train going by routinely. There is Broadway Park where I spent most of my childhood playing and meeting new friends that I would forget the next day. There is my barber who I have been going to since we moved here so seventeen years who has also watched me grow from childhood. There is the supermarket two blocks away that we have been going to for years and where we get our usual food supplies. There are the street fruit sellers that sometimes we can get two avocados for $1, if we’re lucky. There is the laundromat that my family go to weekly even though we have washers and dryers in the basement of the apartment. Probably because the washers and dryers in the basement are always full. There is the street adjacent to the LIRR that leads to a highway, where you can get a perfect view of the sunset. If I come home around the time the sun sets (around 5:30) I can catch a glimpse of the purple sky and the dark clouds that surround an orange semi-circle on the walk home from the station. These are only some of the things that pop out into my head when I think of my home.
Just like myself, my home has grown. It has shaped me to be who I am today, it has created experiences for me that others may not have gone through. I have seen many residents move away. There was a big Korean community living in Elmhurst when we moved in, but many of the Korean residents moved away one by one to Flushing or Bayside. Then there were Hispanic families who also eventually moved to other places like Corona. Like birds, they migrated with the flock. If I had lived in a different home, I definitely would be a changed person. I would not ever switch my home for someone else’s and hopefully neither would they. Why would you want to change the main thing that makes you you?
Home to me, is a place where I can feel secure and express myself. It is where my friends and family are and it doesn’t have to be a physical setting. Home is where I gain experiences, life lessons. It can also be where traumatic events that affected me took place. So when I say that my home evolves with me, am I just saying that I evolve and as I grow, my perception of home evolves? If someone were to ask me where I’m from, they usually mean my place of origin, my mother country, and I would answer Korea, knowing that that is the answer they were expecting. When I think about that question, I don’t really know the true answer. I was raised practically my whole life in Elmhurst, Queens but that isn’t the only place where I have gained experiences and my fondest memories. I believe that the definition of home is your experiences and the place where you feel most secure. That can be in the company of loved ones, or the places where you have felt the most hardship but learned from it and became stronger. Home is a massive word yet only four letters. It can be dissected into so many different meanings. Yet, I feel as though the word home is the only appropriate word to describe the experiences I have gone through in the paragraphs above. Those experiences and memories are integrated into me and never would I want to go back and change them. That is what home means to me.