What makes a house a home?

I just got back from a 10-day trip to Utah this week and, since Joel’s in Germany, I came home to an empty house. This was the first time I’ve come home from a trip to our new house and I found myself trying to remember, that first night back, where the silverware drawer was and where the cups were, like it was only another house that I was visiting. We’ve been in this house for 7 weeks now and it is starting to feel like our home, but it has got me thinking about just what it is that makes a house a home.

The first night we spent in our new home, I remember waking up in the night, trying to remember where the bathroom was and feeling like I was in just another (really messy) hotel room (wait a second--it still looks like a really messy hotel room…). That first week of unpacking was tough because it seemed like every box I opened had stuff in it that led to another box, which led me to another box, until I felt like I was going in circles. But we ploughed through trying to find new places for our old stuff, and occasionally I’d find a treasure in a box--meaning I knew I had mattress pads for all the beds and towels for all the bathrooms, but they had been put in random boxes for one reason or another and then would just magically appear.

We managed to get things set up in the first week to be mostly functional when our kids came home from college. We were excited for them to see the new house, but their initial reaction was more like “this is not really our home.” But they were troopers, and my daughter even spent the first night here setting up some of the Christmas decorations so that we weren’t complete Scrooges. That was the first thing that started to make it seem like our home.

My 86-year-old mom also braved the cold weather and flew from St. George, Utah, to be with us for Christmas, and she enjoyed just being able to sit in our new, sun-filled great room and read and watch all of us come and go and work to get as much as we could unpacked. Just having that memory of her here in our home makes me smile and be glad that she was willing to make such a big, physical effort to be with us (because travelling is tiring even when you’re not 86 and unused to high altitude).

The next thing that helped it feel like a home was having our friends come over for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner/nativity reading/Christmas music performances. The house was filled with more than 30 people who were all eating and talking and laughing and there was plenty of room for everyone (in past years, our tiny galley kitchen would usually be uncomfortably crammed with too many people). We always took extra care to help people to feel comfortable in our old home, and now we were seeing that happen in our new home too.

Not only did we change one house for another, though, we also had to get used to new people at church. I didn’t know how disorienting it would feel to go to church with people who don’t know me or know my background. I had been going to church in the same building and with (some) of the same people for the last 26 years, but now we are in a different building  with only a few familiar faces of people who had lived briefly in our old ward several years ago. We are only 5 miles from our old house, but it feels like an entirely new world. So I’m learning how to think about who I am right now, without letting my past experiences and service at church define me. I still have my old friends and see them regularly. But not as often as before, because we live a little farther away--we’re not truly “neighbors” anymore, the kind that can just pop in because they’re driving by and see your car in the driveway. And new relationships take time to build. Meeting someone once doesn’t make you besties. Time spent together, experiences shared together, feeling accepted and understood by someone--those are the things that make true, lasting friendships.

So after all this rambling, I’ve decided that it is time that makes a house a home--the time to create new memories of shared experiences. Spend enough time in a place, like the Residence Inn in Munich, or a friend’s basement (while you’re waiting for your house to be built), or a house for 20 years, and that will become your home. But given enough time, new and unfamiliar places can start to feel like home too. I’m grateful for every morning that I have in my new house, for each new day of learning and working and feeling more at home.