A Life Philosophic is a little late this week because I’ve been back to the home I’ve never lived in. I was in Italy for an unprecedented family gathering to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of an aunt and uncle. The centre of activity was the three-storey house that my uncles built before I was born.
That building is the only physical place that remains as living link to my childhood, the one home on either side of my family that has been a constant throughout my life. Even though I have never spent more than a few weeks there, it is the closest thing to a family home my siblings and I have.
The house in Lombardy carried the weight of family history more heavily than usual this time. The Bagginis are not ones for lavish celebrations and in the past the extended family has only gathered en masse for weddings and funerals. The turnout this time exceeded all these. From beginning to end I had a sense that I’m sure others shared that this was the first and last time we’d see all these people together. Three of the generation of uncles and aunts had already died, including my father. One other is terminally ill, others visibly frail.
The poignancy was deepened by the sight of my nephew playing in the gravelled courtyard. Not so long ago it was me, my siblings and my cousins doing exactly the same. Now we were the middle generation: soon enough we’ll be among the nonnos and nonnas, attending the funerals of our peers, not our elders.
The next day I visited old family friends in Liguria and another home that evoked long memories: the flat we often stayed at as children and still occupied by the now elderly parents. The most evocative room was of course the kitchen/dining room, where we shared so many meals. Their children and some grandchildren met us there for a drink and I could see how this was for them the geographical heart of the family.
The following day, however, we went to a very different home. The two people missing from the dinner in Liguria were the eldest sister and her son. 32 years ago she had shocked her family by going to live in the community of Damanhur near Torino. As a gross over-simplification, it has a kind of “new age” philosophy, centred around beliefs concerning intersecting cosmic energy lines that traverse the universe. It is famous for the temples it has carved out inside a mountain where these interstellar lines meet. (Tobias Jones writes well about it in his Utopian Dreams)
When members join they adopt an animal name. Our old friend was Gaza (Magpie) although she is still happy for people too use her given name too. When Gaza greeted us, almost the first thing she said was how pleased she was that we had finally visited her home. That’s how it felt to her as soon as she stepped inside more than three decades ago, and that’s how it still feels to her today.
The idea of “home” has interested me for some time, but I haven’t been able to devote much time to think it through (which for me involves writing about it). I was surprised by how moved I was by the sense of home I got in Lombardy, given how little time I’d spent there in my life. I don’t even speak Italian well, and for some time hardly at all, so my connection with my Italian family is limited. Still, the house and family feel like a kind of anchor, one of the few sources of continuity that binds my autobiography. At the same time I could completely understand Gaza’s feeling of finding a home that has nothing to do with childhood or where you were brought up. That’s how I felt when I moved to Bristol, already in my mid-thirties.
I don’t usually open up my blogs for comments, but I wanted to make an exception this time because I’m curious to hear what home means to you. What feels like home to you and why? What doesn’t feel like home, even though people might assume it does? And is the feeling of home always a positive one? I’d be grateful if you’d share your thoughts to help feed mine. (UPDATE: the comments facility doesn’t seem to be working! Do try but also copy your comment and email it to me using this form, which does work.)
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