Coming home: Finding a sense of place in the world

I have lived here in the Powderhorn neighborhood for almost five years now. I am fortunate to have a spacious and light-filled apartment on the north side of Powerhorn Park. I have plenty of south and east facing windows, and the changing seasons and life of the park is literally my front yard. In the summer there are daily soccer and volleyball games, in the autumn the football leagues move in, in the winter there are laughing children hurtling down the snowy slopes on their sleds, and in the spring I watch as families and children emerge from winter’s hibernation to walk in the windy freshness of the park. I’ve lived here long enough to plant a vibrant flower garden, get to know my neighbors, and watch the kids downstairs grow from toddlers in diapers to active kids on bicycles.

Where I grew up, in central Kentucky, a person and their family had to have been there for several generations to really be “from” somewhere, to be considered anything other than an outsider. My five years of residence means I’ve almost earned the right to say I’m a newcomer to Powderhorn, according to my Kentucky measure. Yet, I call this neighborhood “home” more than any other place I’ve lived so far. I grew up in a large Catholic family of farmers. Our roots resonate with the work we’ve done for generations with our hands and the earth. Our connection to physical place is strong. The women in my family—my mother, aunts, grandmothers and great-grandmothers—have canned, crafted, birthed children, and created homes for many generations. And yet, wanderlust filtered into my blood from somewhere. Although I stayed in Kentucky long enough to earn my college degree, I’ve since wandered far into many crevices and corners of the world, from Vermont to California, from France to India to Brazil and back to Minnesota. One theme links all of these disparate travels into faraway places: what exactly is it that creates the notion, the feeling, and the experience of being at “Home”?

In spite of my residency in Powderhorn, or maybe because I am so settled, I began a conscious process of asking what is it about a place that makes it feel like home. I began to wonder if anyone around me had ever struggled with this idea of coming home. It seems obvious, doesn’t it, that humans have an instinctive need or longing for home, but what is it really about? If I am so perpetually in search of it, how will I know when I’ve arrived? Do you create that feeling from within or is it to be found outside? Is coming home a relationship to physical place, a resonance with the land, the topography, or the climate? Do we create home in our relationships, such as with family, neighbors, or friends? Is home identifying with a cultural or ethnic group, knowing your people, your stories, or your ancestry?

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, home is variously defined as, “a place where one lives,” or “the place where something is discovered or developed; a source.” Home used as a verb is “action toward the center of something,” as in, “homing in on the truth.” So it seems that home is both where you are and where you create and discover yourself.

The author Cheryl Mendelson, in her book “Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, “describes homemaking as the art of infusing your home with love and care, which in turn nurtures your relationships with self and others. I recognize myself in Mendelson’s words. Since consciously engaging in this process of “coming home,” my apartment is now a place where my friends feel welcome and where they want to come for conversation and connection over a cup of tea. It’s also a place where I have the safety and stability to become more of who I’d like to be. Thus, it seems that truly creating a home is becoming adept at cycling your relationship with the world through your relationship with your self.

Another vital quality that makes this neighborhood home to me is that so many parts of how I walk in the world are close by. I love that the parking lot on the corner of 31st and Chicago is transformed into a Farmers’ Market every Saturday from May to October. I love the diversity and the multiple languages on the storefronts up and down East Lake Street. I love walking down to the corner of Bloomington and Lake to slip into the welcome atmosphere of the Phillips-Powderhorn Cultural Wellness Center. In our discussions about home at the Wellness Center, we’ve described it as the place where we find our own story, and in this way, deepen and discover our very Selves.

Speaking of stories, every spring In the Heart of the Beast Theatre hosts the MayDay parade and celebration. From my apartment I can hear the loud clanging of their trumpets, tubas and drums, as the puppeteers and stiltwalkers rehearse the ceremony in Powderhorn Park. The MayDay festival is a reminder of the artistic and creative soul of our neighborhood. Recently, the Heart of the Beast sent out a mailing with a refrigerator magnet enclosed, and on this magnet, in a comforting orange-brown color, was a steaming bowl of soup and the word “Home.” They fleshed out their concept of home with words like “love,” “sustenance” and “the telling of stories.” I asked Kathee Foran, Executive Director of the Heart of the Beast, what it was about the theater’s work that was evocative of this image of home. She said, “We strongly identify with this neighborhood and have from the very beginning. [Our philosophy is] you bloom where you’re planted. We certainly feel planted here in Powderhorn. We can’t imagine doing the MayDay parade and festival anywhere else in the city. It would seem odd and it just wouldn’t be the same event.”

The puppet workshops at Heart of the Beast are free and open to the public. Strolling down 14th Avenue, past the Hostess bakery outlet and across Lake Street into Heart of the Beast, I can enter a humming world of kids, adults, creativity, messy hands and positive possibility, as we papier mâché puppets into larger than life figures which will then parade down Bloomington Avenue in the MayDay parade. These figures make themes of social justice, peace and tolerance come alive for us and for the children, giving us a chance to ask what story, what kind of home we want to leave for the next generation.

As affordable housing continues to be scarce, as violence continues in our neighborhood, and as funding for youth summer programs gets cut, I invite you, my Powderhorn neighbors, into a consideration of what it is to be at home. How well you inhabit your neighborhood, greet the people you see on the street each day, and tend your home, is a reflection of the extent to which you own who you are and where you’ve chosen to be for now. Coming home can be seen as a metaphoric journey which connects layers of place, body, relationship, heart and self. Consider your home as an investment in your own source, who you know yourself to be, and who you’d like to become. In this way, we send our collective roots down to blossom where we are planted, creating the support for ourselves and each other that make this neighborhood a place we all call Home.