Home is a Feeling that Always Expands

I have always loved travelling. I love the bubbling sense of possibility that airports represent, regardless of the nagging anxiety that can surround them. I am emboldened and bolstered by the understanding that I can get myself from place to place even if they are separated by oceans. The swooping feeling of exhilaration when a plane takes off was once terrifying to me, but now is full of hope.

I had the opportunity to spend the past ten days in South Bend, Indiana, to meet and interview next year’s candidates for House of Brigid XII (yikes! Time flies!). Thankfully, South Bend also happens to be my hometown, so in heading there for work I also had the opportunity to see my family and to introduce them to Father Denis and Maddie at dinner in my home. I had two very bumpy flights, battered by Storms Ciara and Dennis (on the last one into Dublin, the man sitting next to me seemed quite concerned that I was using my headphone cord as a makeshift rosary during landing), two hours in the car with my brother Liam from Chicago to South Bend (he absolutely saved the day when my flight was delayed enough to make me miss my train in Chicago, driving all the way from Bloomington to give me a lift), two puppies to cuddle once I got to my house, and so many surprised faces from my friends on campus who didn’t know I would be home. I got to have my favorite morning coffee conversations with my Dad, long hugs from my sister Maeve, even longer monologues about books from Paddy, a 10pm FaceTime call from Jack asking when I was leaving (answer: the next day. It’s ok, he had football commitments), plus a visit from my Aunt Ellen and a family who wanted a tour of Notre Dame. It was a full, exhausting, yet refreshing week.

As I taxied back to the Cluain Dara house in the early hours of Friday morning, I suddenly became aware that the most surprising thing about this visit home was not how difficult it was to leave my family again (I don’t think that will ever be easy), but how absolutely right it felt to actually arrive back in Wexford. I have been positively giddy the past couple days, and not just because of jet lag; somehow both journeys, to South Bend and back to Wexford, have felt like a coming home.

I’ve been pondering this notion of “home” often this year. I know it is something of a cliché, not to mention endlessly cheesy, for students to study abroad and talk about how the concept of “home” is more of a feeling than a place; I definitely fell into this trend during my year abroad in France sophomore year. It’s even something of a pop culture cliché as well – a line from a song that a friend of mine shared with me junior year comes to mind: “You’ve discovered that home / is not a person or place / but a feeling you can’t get back.”

While I’m not condoning Noah Gundersen’s pessimism about finding a sense of belonging, this question of feeling at home has been on my mind plenty over the past couple years. Nothing makes you feel quite as unmoored as losing a mother – the womb that bore me, to put it poetically, my first home, is no longer a part of this world. Where am I most at home, now that my life looks so different than it did just a few years ago?

Even though the conversation about a transitory home may be rather trite, this question hit me in a new way this week as I was overcome with relief when my plane touched down in Dublin. I felt the bubbly anticipation of seeing the community members and parish community that I missed so much. Ten days can feel like ages! Knowing where the bus stop was, how the taxis work, how to cope with jet lag – suddenly I realized how comfortable I am here in Ireland, even more comfortable than I was in Chicago on the way to the airport. It feels like I belong to this place, to these people, as I simultaneously belong to South Bend, to my family and friends on Notre Dame’s campus.

As we launch headlong into the season of Lent this week (that’s right, somehow this Wednesday is already Ash Wednesday), I realized that this language of a transitory home is a fascinating point of contemplation for the season. On Wednesday, we will read somewhat frightening readings about our mortality and the brevity of this life. For you are dust, and unto dust you shall return, as we receive ashes on our foreheads.

Our true Home, the full and complete unity in Belonging, is not of this world. We are blessed to know many homes in this life, both in people and in places, but as people of faith, we know that our true sense of Belonging comes from the God of reunion and unity, the One who ceaselessly folds us into His reckless, unending love. I’ve been imagining wrapping myself in God’s love as I would wrap a blanket around my shoulders, and finding in it my true sense of identity, belonging, and of a home without end.

It is an absolute blessing to know both Wexford and South Bend as home and to love them both so fiercely. I am sure I will know many more homes in this life, all adding joy and new facets of beauty to my time this side of eternity. As we begin to contemplate the sober tone of mortality that Lent brings with it, I am consoled in the knowledge that my understanding of Home is a perpetually expanding one, including all the people I have come to love, both spanning oceans and beyond the fabric of this life.