On Being Home

I could not wait to leave home. The idea of coming to college was such an exciting experience to me. I looked forward to not just New York City itself, or the fact that I would be taking new and challenging classes, but mostly the chance to leave Delaware. I wanted a new experience outside of my mundane routine in my home state: school, food, and sleep.

When people ask where I come from, I tell them that Delaware is my “home,” yet honestly I do not believe it. What is a “home?” The word immediately conjures the old familiar song by John Howard Payne, saying, “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.” Payne, in vague words, explains that a “home” has some sort of power over a person, no matter where it is or what the conditions. It transcends the conditions of a place and becomes something of much more meaning, something born beyond the senses, a feeling that is not taste or tough or sight, one that can only be described in words of temperature, like “warmth,” which simultaneously tell you everything and nothing about what a place is like. While I agree that even a shoddy home can always be appreciated, I never felt the power or the warmth that Payne hints to toward Delaware. I lived there, and it was familiar, but I did not feel compelled to call it my “home.”

Not to say that I did not find home in Delaware. I spent a large portion of my childhood working at the Three Little Bakers Dinner Theatre in Delaware, and I felt a power, an indescribable connection there that would make me call it my home. Despite the fact that I did not live there, I felt more at home there than I did inside my own house. But what does that even mean? In the old adage, we are told that “Home is where the heart is,” but this is an unclear definition. Certainly it speaks beyond the physical heart; again making “home” less about location than emotional connection, specifically the connection to people, a strength or power that cannot be seen, drawing someone toward others and making them feel comfortable. I can say without a doubt that I love and care for my family, but I still did not feel “at home” when in my house with them.

My parents divorced very early in my life, and they were separated even before the courts declared it official. I have very few memories of my parents living together. My dad had a house somewhere with his soon-to-be-new-wife, and my sister and I still lived in my mother’s house. Shortly after the divorce was final, my mother decided to move to a new house, one in a better neighborhood just down the main road. A few years later my father and stepmother moved into a house a half-hour away from my mother. Physically, I felt too torn between houses to call any one of them my “home,” even though I primarily lived with my mother. Emotionally, I felt torn as well. I couldn’t call my dad’s house “home,” because I was never there and I still felt a strong connection with my mother, but my mom’s house wasn’t quite “home” either because it was far from my dad.

Three Little Bakers was more of a haven to me than a theatre. I could escape the houses and people that reminded me of the divorce, but still see both of my parents on a regular basis. It happened to be only a few minutes’ drive from my father’s house, so I felt close to him, but my mother was always with me at the theatre as well, since I was too young to drive myself. Working at the theatre also gave me a chance to perform, something that thrilled me, not just because of the recognition and applause from the audience, but because I got to be someone else. I was more comfortable being someone else; I didn’t like to be myself. This way, I could let people see of me what I wanted them to see. The fact that I felt so comfortable there allowed me to feel more connected to Three Little Bakers.

As a young child, I had fairly low self-esteem and few friends. The divorce of my parents did not help my confidence, even though I never blamed myself. My elementary school teachers told my parents that it was because there were “no other children on his intellectual level.” Whether that was true or not, all I knew was that most kids didn’t like me. Theatre gave me the opportunities to be a completely different person, and to meet other actors who did not treat me the way most people did. In theatre, I was not just “Kevin, the kind of weird kid who likes music but can’t do sports,” I was “Louis, the son of the assistant to the King of Siam,” or “Kurt, the younger boy in the von Trapp family singers.” It allowed me to become friends with people that I normally probably wouldn’t even meet, not just of my own age but of all ages. The famous international actress Juliette Binoche once said, “Choosing to be in the theatre was a way to put my roots down somewhere with other people. It was a way to choose a new family.” I wanted to have a big family, so whereas Binoche may have wanted a whole new family, I wanted to create a new extension to my existing one. If emotional connection to people defines where a person’s home is, then 3LB was most definitely my “home.” I felt strongly connected to a large number of people there, and I enjoyed every minute of being a part of my theatre family.

Simply enjoying oneself and feeling emotionally connected to the people in a place does not, however, make it your home. One year, my sister had the opportunity to go to California with her dance studio for a competition. Seeing it as a chance for a trip, my mom and I went along with her. Since I was starting some classes at the studio, many of the people who went on the trip were good friends of mine, and I had a great deal of fun while there, but never once did I consider California my home. I knew little of the state, seeing only what the competition directors allowed us to experience, and for the duration of my stay, I hardly noticed that I was even in another state. To me, it was simply a new place. The same is true of the beach house that my grandparents rented every year in Ocean City, New Jersey. It was a great house, and I had many memories there with people I love, but I never felt like it was my “home.” There is a certain degree of permanence required for something to be a “home.”

A home cannot, however, be a static thing. It must be dynamic and change with the changing circumstances of a life. Three Little Bakers was my home for a long time, but when I got to high school, I noticed that I was not there as often as before. In high school I took part in many activities, mostly music, which took up a huge amount of my time. Theatre took a backseat to the other things I wanted to do. In time, I became very close with the people at my high school. As I spent more time at school and less at the theatre, I started to lose touch with the people who I had considered my “family” at 3LB. As a result, I noticed that my home had changed. Concord High School became my home, rather than Three Little Bakers.

The change of homes was easy for me. Even when my identified home remained the same physical place, like Three Little Bakers, I was used to it changing. In theatre, you get to be a specific person on stage with certain few other people for only a limited amount of time. After that, the theatre becomes another place entirely, and many of the people in the show change. You could be a chorus dancer with a huge cast in “Telephone Hour” one month, and be the youngest member of a 50’s street gang in New York with only a few other people the next month. Home changed even when it remained the same.

When I came to college, I knew that things would be different. I knew that graduating from high school would force me to lose many of the connections I had made while a high-school student and to purge it as my home. I would have loved to stay there, but I had to move on. Over the summer, I found myself “homeless.” I still had a house to live in, but it still did not feel like home. I was out of Concord, and Three Little Bakers had since then closed its doors. I could no longer do shows there, or make it my temporary home before college began. There was no place that I felt comfortable calling “home” over the summer, so I became incredibly eager to come to college.

Coming from a state of “homelessness,” it was not at all difficult for me to make connections with new people immediately upon coming to New York University. Within the first few days of being in the dorm, I became good friends with many people on my floor. Within the first week, almost the entire floor went places together as a group. In the few weeks that I’ve known these people, it does not feel like a stretch to call many of them part of my family.

It bears a certain resemblance to being back in the theatre. My floor mates and I are crammed into a small space with a lot of stuff, reminding me of years of sitting in the miniscule backstage of 3LB with the rest of the cast and too many set pieces for the space housing them. The smallness almost leads to a forced intimacy—we cannot help but to run into each other all the time—and energy that could not possibly exist in a large space. It is almost like we are being pulled together by magnets, which lose effectiveness when they are pulled farther apart. College also holds the feeling of opportunity, not just academically but socially. I can show people what I want them to see of myself, and since they have never met me before, it becomes my new identity. It is just like being back onstage playing a character, but this time it is a character of my own invention.

The difference about being in New York and not Delaware is that I not only feel a connection to people; I feel a strong connection to place as well. I love New York City, and I have always wanted to live here. I feel safe and comfortable, despite the ideas most people have about how unsafe the city is. The American novelist Thomas Wolfe said it perfectly when he wrote, “One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.” Contrary to the negative connotation that is somewhat implied by the statement in that one feels no more connected after having been in New York for five years, in context, Wolfe makes this statement hugely positive. It almost forces the reader to imagine someone entering the city and immediately feeling at home. I am unfamiliar with Wolfe’s life, but the statement implies that he did not originally live in New York, and moved here at some point in his life, at which time he fell in love. He then presumably lived in the city for a large portion of his life—something that I decided I wanted to do on one of my first visits to New York. I have not yet had the experience to make that statement regarding five years, but I felt like I belonged to New York even as a tourist the first time I ever came to Manhattan. The feeling has only increased as I kept visiting, became interested in NYU, and now live here.

Being at New York University, and specifically my floor in my dorm, is definitely an impermanent thing; at the end of the year, all of us will leave the dorm and go to live other places, but it also has permanence to it. We will all be living together for the next school year, and some of us may end up together in later living situations if we so choose.

New York University has become my home. It is my home for at least the next few years, and then I will move on to something else, perhaps a job in a new place, or an apartment off-campus, or something else entirely, and that will probably become my home. But for now, I am home.