HOME IS WHERE YOU WEAR YOUR HAT

I understand the idea of place, and the value of having a home place. But home isn’t only or necessarily a matter of place. And even in families deeply attached to their home places, one of the partners in each of the marriages in that family has probably forsaken a home place to become a member, a partner, a resident in it.

But I respect the idea of a home place, and sometimes I wish I had such a place still. But mostly I am happy this way. Home isn’t where I hang my hat; home is where I wear it.

When I visit you, you greet me saying “Take off your hat and stay a while.” You take my hat and coat and hang them up for me. And having hung my hat with the hats of those who belong to the home, you make me welcome: “Make yourself at home.”

It’s not that I would prefer to wear my hat in your house: wearing my hat has nothing to do with home. Where I wear my hat is not in the house, or on the street: I wear my hat on my head—and that’s where home is.

I left my physical home when I was seventeen, to go away to college. And I understood it in just those terms. Not many young people in my home town went to college; fewer still went away to college rather than attend the college in our little town. My grandparents were the children of immigrants. With one exception, their four children had all stayed at home. Though my grandfather had but a seventh-grade education, his children all went to the local college, and he served for nearly thirty years on its board of trustees. And my father was the college’s basketball coach. But my mother was proud that all three of her children had gone away from home to college: first my older brother, then me, and eventually my younger sister.

When I was a sophomore in college, I went home for Christmas, and then, in January, left to return to school. I was hitch-hiking. As my mother dropped me off at the edge of town, I said, “I’ll call when I get home.” My mother smiled a weak smile, and kissed me.

Throughout my life I have made my home wherever I was, by taking home with me under my hat.

Home is an attitude, not toward place but toward life. Home means being comfortably a part of where I am: comfortable in and with my surroundings. Understanding is a relationship, and it helps make relationships. To be at home I have to understand where I am, and relate myself--and everything that I carry around in my head as mind-baggage--to this new place. Home is what happens in my head as I make that relationship. Underneath my hat, I am at home.

I have been at home in a lot of places. For the last eight years I have been at home in Amsterdam, mostly. I am at home there, not just because I have a flat there, and live there year round. I am at home in Amsterdam because it is such a civilized place, and I enjoy civilization. I am home because it is peaceful, not violent; it is quiet, too, and it is very, very beautiful. And people are friendly and open and helpful. Living here, I am not involved in anything particularly bad. I am a member of a remarkably coherent society—and I am not a second-class citizen. My race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, bank balance count neither for not against me.

As I get older I sometimes think that a home place would be a good thing to have. A place to retire to. But I’m not ready to retire, and maybe won’t be until either my mind fails or I die, and I leave this home I have been making all these years now, under my hat.

Bert