Maggie Slepian

When I was looking for a subject to write about this month, I asked my sibling group chat for advice. 

My sister responded immediately: Write about coming home! 

Ok, sure. I usually write about whatever is happening at the given moment, and I happened to be visiting my family in New Hampshire for the holidays when I started writing this. 

But I felt a twinge of uncertainty at the word home. It wasn’t necessarily a bad feeling, but it jumped out at me. The majority of my formative adult experiences have taken place 2,000 miles from my hometown, yet people still asked if I was going home for the holidays, and I’m sure my family considers my trips to New Hampshire as “visiting home.”

I’m the outlier in my family. The rest of them live within 90 minutes of each other, and two out of my three siblings have houses five miles from my parents. I am the blinking red dot 2,000 miles away from their cluster in the northeast, and it’s been this way for more than 12 years. I moved out west after graduating college in 2010 and I never moved back. With such a large percentage of my life spent elsewhere, what does home really mean for me? 

Is it home if you need Google Maps to drive four miles from your sister’s house to your childhood friend’s home? 

Is it home if you go into town with your siblings and don’t know a single person they stop and chat with?

The idea of home changes when you’ve split your life pretty evenly between two places. My old bedroom has been repurposed, and no one at the gym I worked at for six years knows who I am. I still recognize the occasional neighbor or acquaintance at the local grocery store, and that brief connection reminds me: Oh yeah, this is where I grew up.

The feeling of being a stranger in your hometown is lonely yet unavoidable if you move away. 

The town looks and feels familiar, but I am a visitor in a place I used to live. It’s like watching a movie you’ve seen a dozen times—the setting looks the same, but there is a pronounced separation in what you see and how you relate to it. 

Is home the place you grew up, or the place you chose to live? What if neither of them feel exactly like home, but you also feel comfortable in both places? Where does that leave you?

At a certain point, the definition of home changes, and the answer I came up with annoys me because it sounds like the tagline to a generic Netflix holiday special. I tried to phrase it in a way that didn’t make my eyes roll back in my head, but there’s no way around it: home is the people. 

GROSS! But true! 

I feel little connection to the part of New Hampshire where I grew up, yet one of the highlights of my year was spending time with my parents and three younger siblings.

I might miss the turn to my sister’s street half the times I visit, but bringing over an iced latte and spending the morning chatting with her was like visiting a close friend I hadn’t seen in a while. The same goes for my youngest brother. When we went to the gym and got lunch, it was like we’d seen each other just a few days before, not six months. I took the bus to Boston to spend the day with my middle brother, and am continually amazed at how we share an appreciation for art and museums that I don’t have with anyone else in my life. 

I spend time with each of my family members in different ways, from volunteering at a local theater with my mom to bagging a winter peak with my dad, and it’s less about where I am than it is about who I’m doing it with.

My chosen home in Montana feels similar. I don’t feel a strong connection to the town I live in. It’s changed a lot in the past few years with the pandemic, influx of second-home buyers, and increased cost of living. I love the access to public land and the variety of outdoor activities, but most mountain towns fit that bill. The reason I love it here is less about the town and more about the people. After a depressing hiatus from having friends, I made the decision to stop working out of town and started actively reaching out to recover my social life. Unsurprisingly, I started enjoying my life here more. 

There was a period of time where I felt like I belonged nowhere. New Hampshire felt unfamiliar and Montana felt lonely. Neither of these places have changed, but my understanding of belonging has progressed. 

When I think about visiting my hometown, I don’t think about the place itself, I think about lunch and museums with my brothers, going on a run with my sister, and chatting with my parents while I mess up the dinner I promised to make for them. 

The same goes for Montana. I think about game nights, climbing, skiing, hikes, and park outings with my friends. I think about recognizing the people at my favorite local coffee shop and knowing half the people in the audience at the documentary screenings. These experiences could happen just about anywhere, but I’ve chosen to have them here. 

My idea of belonging and a sense of place has shifted, and while I’m still working out what that means, I’m getting closer. 

Next step: a low-budget Netflix movie with your favorite washed-up 2000’s actor. Look for it in the very last row in the untitled category after a solid hour of scrolling. You’re welcome.