Homeward bound

There’s something interesting about readers of this publication at this particular time. The majority of you are students who chose, for one reason or another, to stay in Bloomington for the summer. Maybe some of you had classes to take, but others of you might have found you simply prefer living in Bloomington to living at home. Why is that?

I know why I like it better here: My room at home is largely empty and my cat Simon decided somewhere along the way that ignoring me and giving all his attention to my stepdad was a better use of his time. I feel very strongly that I could give ol’ Stepdad a run for his money if I grew a beard as long as his, but – sigh – that’s not really the point.

The point is this: Whatever your precise situation, going home can be strange these days.

Sure, most of us will get married and make our own homes someday, but as the media loves to remind our generation, someday isn’t coming right after college the way it did for many before us.

The media experts have many catchy media-selling names for the between-childhood-and-adulthood phase our generation seems so prone to: A cover story in Time circa 2005 labeled us as “Twixters.” David Brooks of The New York Times calls the post-college years “The Odyssey Years.” Stony Brook University sociology professor and author Michael Kimmel insists both young men and young women are living in “Guyland.”

So the question is, for the roughly 10 years we’ll spend floundering around and buying magazines about our floundering around, where do we call home?

I think, like most big questions in life, we can defer judgment to the universe’s smartest creatures – kittens.

A wise kitten napping in a dirty flowerpot once told me, “When you are at peace with yourself, anywhere is home.” In complete journalistic disclosure, the aforementioned kitten told me this through the medium of an inspirational poster in my eighth grade English classroom. But its message transcends sticky tack and colorful borders. And, surprisingly enough, it transcends the years between eighth grade and college.

You can try to find home in the refrigerator the fateful morning you decide to make a burrito from everything “not too expired” in your fridge. Or in the drain the first time you realize that human hair, when left to its own post-shower devices long enough, can actually resemble a large rodent or “hairodent,” hanging upside down in the drain from its tail. (And that it is your job and your job only to remove it.)

But it’s doubtful.

During this time, home means stability, and a series of walkup apartments or rented houses with moth-eaten couches don’t really scream stability. We might only be able to find home within ourselves.

So maybe during our “homeless” years our goal should be to become emotional hermit crabs, carrying our homes with us in the form of thoughts, feelings, perceptions ... and probably a kitten poster or two, for good measure.