photogabble » What makes a home?

What makes a home?

Revised: October 6, 2008

Before I came to Coventry to study at University I had a clear idea what the word Home meant. The concept of home to me was a place where I felt safe surrounded by family and friends, a place I would always come back to at the end of the day.

Moving to Coventry and attending university has changed that slightly, the line drawn between away and home has been considerably blurred to the point that I now see both locations as home, rather than one or the other. I have been asked to sum up both locations with an object that represents them, this is a difficult task for me as I have come to feel that Coventry is as much my “home” as living with my parents at the home they made for me. Physically the two locations are quite different, my parental home is set in rural Kentish countryside and is surrounded on all four corners by green and bird song which in Coventry is replaced with city sprawl and the noise of the seven o’clock number 41 bus rumbling at the bus stop outside. This is however a shallow comparison, physical differences between the two locations aren’t what makes one a different home from the other; arbitrary emotional attachments to both people and places in each location are what make one unique from the other.

My question to you is what means home to you? Not surprisingly to many it is a different place than that where they currently reside, be it their home-land or a place they grew up. Coventry to me is my second home its very different from the parental home but its also where my friends are, a place where I am happy and secure and while these are intangible ideas they are what makes a home for me.