Architecture of HomeFrom Sears to Frank Lloyd Wright, the physical architecture of home is constantly evolving.Is home a new luxury apartment, a farm or homestead, or a cookie cutter in a subdivision? Is your home lousy with pet hair or immaculately tidy? Is it an echo chamber or does it ring loud with the laughter of children. Does your family extend beyond the nuclear or is it a tight-knit group of three?Tell us what your home is built of. What makes a house a home?
The Blue Penguin Teapot, The Red Ball, The Empty Drawer and That Wooden Mortar: The Mementos That Make My Home Housing My Heart
Home has not always been sweet for me nor where my heart always belongs but I know myself has always been longing for one. My parents were civil servants in Indonesia whose lives were dictated by what the government and community tells them to. Transfers happened quite often so I spent most of my childhood with my grandparents. My childhood home was land my grandpa bought and built into a motel and restaurant where he turned the extra space into houses for his children. It might be bizarre for Americans to think that way. However, it is quite normal for Indonesian parents to do so, building each child's house on the extra land or even extending one’s house to have a sort of cabin for each of their children
When I lived with my grandparents, I had a nook in their room for a twin bed and a small cupboard next to it with a built-in shelf on top despite still co-sleeping with my grandparents. One day, when we went window shopping in downtown Bandung (Bandung, capital city of West Java, Indonesia), I saw a blue penguin teapot set from the store we passed by. I loved it and decided to buy it after my grandma gave me a nod. Once home, I put that penguin teapot set on the top of my cupboard, my very first mark I left to make that nook my home.
When my grandpa started to fall ill, my grandma accompanied him thus she needed to be away for an extended period of time. I was told to live with my aunty in another house within my grandpa’s complex. I remember that my room was a makeshift room made by putting a double bed against one corner of the living room and a tall cupboard on another end as a divider between my bed and the rest of the room. I slept there with one of my distant relative teens that stayed there after my grandpa took his Dad under his wing to work in the motel. Before leaving, grandma put a lot of coins inside this red plastic ball container for my pocket money, reminding me of that arcade game character chomping around a coin because I had to open up the mouth to get my money and the spring would shut it back down. Then, the red ball was my mark to take ownership of the space, in the midst of being on other people’s property.
When my grandpa passed away, I went with my grandma to move to another aunty's house in another town. I felt so lost going to this bigger city, my confidence crumbled. I scrambled to fi nd something that could mark my existence, to house myself. There it was, in the room I shared with my grandma, I found a desk with an empty drawer. I could not recall what I put in that drawer but I was happy and content to have my personal container in that stranger's house to make it a home, I had something I owned that I could put my possessions and even secrets into.
Next thing I knew, I went back to my grandpa’s old complex with grandma where I used to live for another year before the family business started to go under. My parents decided to take me back, then there I went. My parents’ house was supposed to be my very own, especially that I would have my private bedroom. However, it felt very alien nonetheless. They were the parents that I did not remember spending time with for years. I would remember one or two moments they came visiting but they never particularly tried to talk to me or play with me. I also know I sometimes visited them and we might go out somewhere but that was it. I must reclaim this house, I thought. I put my blue penguin teapot, my red ball on the top of my desk and fi lled the drawer with my secrets to mark my space.
Years passed since then. When I fi rst landed in America, the epiphany suddenly settled in that I just got uprooted from all the homes I had been in a lifetime. I did not really have anything that I could use to mark my home. However, 6 moves later, I realized that I always had my small wooden mortar to make a spicy sambal that I carried with me on that 32 hour long fl ight from Jakarta, Indonesia to Kansas, USA back then.
That wooden mortar is where I connect the pieces of my home in Indonesia to this foreign land that houses me. From the moment I grind some Thai chillies, shallots, and salt on the mortar; to the times I eat it with some warm rice and fried tofu, it becomes a ritual of purifi cation: to overlook how diff erent the room is organized compared to back home, to forget how diff erent people talk and look, to pass over the fact none of my family is there with me, to let go of my past homes and to sanctuary myself in the new one that present life has given me at the moment. Sometimes, it takes time for those mementos to grow their roots in a new soil, and sometimes you feel that your heart wanders without a home because its nest is not done being rebuilt. Yet, I think I should promise myself that even though I now don’t have my blue penguin teapot, I lost my red pacman container, and I did not retrieve what was in that drawer, I still have my wooden mortar. If I lose that one too, I have my son and my husband to let their roots and memento intertwine with mine, so I can house this wandering heart, turning any soil into a home, wherever that might be, however long it might take.
