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When Are You “At Home”?

Have you ever thought what it means to be “at home”?

Perhaps it’s when you step into the bedrooms where you grew up or when you think about your high-school hallways. Perhaps it’s when you put a pen to paper, a needle to a vinyl record, or a rolling pin to a mound of dough. Or maybe home happens as your feet glide along a dance floor with your spouse’s, whether it’s your first or 500th dance.

Home happens—whether it’s a place, person, or a passion—when we’re known, and we know we belong.

Home Happens

As a visual storyteller, I’ve seen how “home” can happen anywhere with anything or anyone. How so?

“Home” happens at the intersection of being known and being loved. “Home” happens when being vulnerable comes as naturally as exhaling.“Home” happens where we feel the rush of our stories being embraced.

Home happens with even the most mundane, ordinary things—like a porch light.

It All Began with a Porch Light

When do I feel at home? I’m at home when I think about the porch at the house where I grew up, specifically the porch lights slightly below the numbers “885” that hung above the door. Those porch lights softly lit long summer evenings full of bike rides and dripping popsicles, and their warm glow bounced off the heavy, yet somehow weightless snow during winter.

And it’s at that house, marked by those porch lights, that I think about my parents’ tape recorder—and how I fell in love with the power of a story captured on film: a birthday party, a ball game, a bike ride, anything. And with every video, a visual retelling of what it meant to be at home.

That’s where it began for me: underneath those porch lights. When I think about those porch lights, I remember who I am: a son, a brother, and a storyteller.

And it’s when I think about those porch lights that I remember the power of stories to bring us home.

Because, at the end of the day, that’s what we all want: to be home.

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