In a beautiful and vivid essay on home, time, and family, Diane Roberts reflects on the house that her parents built, and their family’s land in Leon County, Florida, to which she feels deeply connected. I especially love Roberts’s thoughts on a home versus a house—the latter is composed of construction materials, but “home implies a complex neural network of family association and feeling, layers of experience, a shared past.” Despite the tragedies the home holds, it is ultimately a place of memory and meaning.
Home and time are as tangled as the skunk vine and Confederate jasmine choking my backyard fence. I suppose that’s to be expected. My house holds our history and the indispensable relics of former houses, objects cherished by the now-dead: the tiny rocking chair my grandfather made for my mother when she was three; the 1960 TR3 in the barn my brother never quite got around to fixing; the two old rosebushes dug up from the Washington County farm, replanted at Great-Aunt Rilla’s house in Chipley, then dug up again and transported to our front yard. The house didn’t simply belong to us, it was us—our mother, our father, Brad, and me.
More stories about “home”
You Can Never Go Home Again. But You Can Spend a Lifetime Trying
‘My father designed two of the houses I grew up in. Then he died. I’m still untangling where his taste ends and mine begins.”
My Father Wants to Age in Place. AI Will Be Watching
“Devices that monitor seniors for safety are appealing to worried loved ones and underresourced home care agencies.”
Sense of Scents
“The annual olfactory rush of cedar pollen is a sign of home.”
How “Cabin Porn” Took Over the Internet
“A rough-hewn A-frame in a snowscape or a tiny log shack by a lake—why off-grid, simple living has long captured the American imagination, and our online attention.”
There Is No Place like Home, Whatever That Is
“According to our writer, home is both longing and belonging.”
Home for a Season
“Maybe there is no tension between settling down and leaving.”
