Home Is Where The Heart Is
Home is generally considered to be our place of residence. Having spent the past two weeks away from ‘home,’ I think the true meaning of the word is misunderstood. I have missed my wife, facing the longest time without seeing each other in eight years, yet it has felt at times like it is her rather than me that is away as there is nothing else about ‘home’ that I have noticed missing. From this, the concept of home has been closely on my mind.
Last Friday, I was one of the many thousands of people who stormed on to the Sydney Cricket Ground to celebrate the 1000th career goal of Sydney forward Lance ‘Buddy’ Franklin. To provide context to this event, there are two milestones in Australian Rules Football that result in this type of crowd reaction; 100 goals in a season, or 1000 goals in a career. This was the first time either had occurred in 13 years. By comparison, one of the two milestones was reached 23 times in the 1990’s. It was a matter of course that such an event would occur in those days, but the game has changed so significantly in the past generation that many wondered if it would happen again. Absence from the game had made the hearts of the fans grow fonder for such a celebration. Never had the field been invaded by so many for so long as it did for Franklin.
As I jumped the fence and started running to the other end of the field, I was home. Running through my head was my 12th birthday. At Woodville Oval in Adelaide, I was amongst a much smaller crowd that rushed to legendary forward Malcolm Blight as he kicked his 100th goal of 1985. I was there with my Mum and my best friend in primary school, Simon. Simon was wearing his Norwood jumper, our opponents on the day, but his speed and his enthusiasm for the event was as great as mine and he beat me to Blight. The celebration superseded allegiance. It was a party atmosphere for all. 37 years on it is a memory so pure.
My first ever Sydney Swans game was with my sister and her friends. We stood behind the goals on the hill at the Randwick end, and although it is a very different stadium today, my seat was almost exactly where I had stood several decades earlier in that match against Fitzroy. That day began a lifelong following of this club, and the passion could never be so complete if not formed through the innocence of childhood fandom. The memory, again so pure.
Before the match, I had spent much of the day connecting with other pure memories. As a small child, my first trip to Sydney was when my sister competed in the Sydney Eisteddfod. While Mum was with my sister through all her rehearsals, Dad and I explored Sydney. We would travel across the city by train, going in to the underground stations and rushing to the platform where the next train was arriving, completely unconcerned about where it would take us. Random discovery was our modus operandi. On later trips, my sisters residential address dictated options, and at one stage the ferry became the standard commute.
For many years now, the Neutral Bay ferry, St James Station, the Sydney Cricket Ground, Bridge Street, Milsons Point, St Martins Tower and the Cronulla Rock Pools all have been home to me. I’ve never lived in Sydney, but they are home because they are connections to pure memories. The Sydney trains connect to my memory of my fathers love for me and his teaching of me. The SCG isn’t home for the glory of premiership years, but for the link to childhood when football was a game of dreams and the players were heroes to me.
Heritage and progress are often in competition, and sometimes the feeling of home gets lost in this. The strongest link to that childhood joy had always been Wynyard Station, from where most of Dad’s trips around Sydney with me began. The station was old, dated, and had outlived it’s ability to adequately serve downtown Sydney. A massive upgrade began in 2015 and is now a modern, efficient station. Unfortunately, it isn’t ‘home’ anymore for me. I admire the work that’s been done. It is right, it is effective, yet it is also sad and a reminder that nothing is forever. The memories remain, but what turns a great memory into a feeling of home is the ability to return. For decades, nowhere felt more like home than Wynyard. Now, the memories remain, but unlike so many other spots, it no longer offers the feeling of home.
Perhaps it is a travellers spirit, but more likely it is just the reality of life that gives my hometown less ability to retain the same form of purity. For every great moment of my childhood in Sydney, there were hundreds of these in my hometown, but day by day life ensured that those memories were interspersed with just as much heartache, tragedy, chronic sickness and disappointment. We carry the good and bad forward with us, and we need both to grow. When we can isolate times, places, products and people that only link to the joyous and positive moments, we will always feel a sense of nostalgia and yearning to align with these.
Friday nights celebration was something different for each person who participated. Yes, it was the celebration of the achievement of one man, but it was something more. For people who had experienced two years of lockdowns and matches moved away from the SCG, this was people who were celebrating freedom. For me, it was celebrating being ‘home.’ Home, where the memories were pure. Home, where my day had been connecting with the people I loved despite none of them being physically with me. Home, the feeling that so many of us travel the world searching for.
Now it is time to return to a different type of home. I love my hometown but it couldn’t feel so special without spending enough time away from it to understand what makes it that way. I love the life inside the four walls I share with my wife, but it is not the land we are on, but the feelings we share that make it that way.
We can move house, but what is truly home to us won’t change. Home is a feeling, and it is where the heart lies. It is the people we love. It is the memories that shape us. As I ran with thousands of strangers, united by a choice of colours that for most, connect us to a time of childhood innocence, I was home. More importantly, I was understanding exactly what home meant to me.