Tell me what was so special about your wife? Well, how long is your program? Well, it was a million tiny little things that, when you added them, meant we were supposed to be together… and I knew it. I knew it the very first time I touched her. It was like coming home… only to no home I’d ever known… I was just taking her hand to help her out of a car, and I knew. It was like… magic. (Sleepless in Seattle)
The term A Sense of Place means different things to people. In its most basic definition, a sense of place is a construct used to characterize the relationship between people and spatial settings. A Sense of Place is a feeling that is invoked by that place in time. It is often used in relation to those characteristics that make a place special or unique, as well as to those that foster a sense of authentic human attachment and belonging. But to me, a sense of place means that feeling of being home.
A sense of place is not necessarily the town you grew up in or the one you presently reside in. As Samuel Baldwin articulated in Sleepless in Seattle, being home can be experienced through another person, just the touch of a women’s hand. A sense of place can be fleeting as we all have experienced snippets of experiential moments in time that provide a feeling of warmth and security. Like being wrapped in a warm blanket, we all have experienced these moments throughout our lives. One example occurred during my youth. Throwing the football around in the backyard, I could hear the cheering and the band from the high school football game being played up the street. Alone in that backyard, people were burning leaves and I was overcome with a feeling of warmth and security. It was a distinct feeling of being at peace and I felt less alone than if I had been sitting in the stands at the game being played at the high school with hundreds of other people. It was a fleeting moment, but one that has stayed with ne my whole life.
As we grow older, a sense of place becomes more elusive. Perspective becomes clouded and it becomes increasingly harder to experience that feeling of home. Technology has sped up our internal clocks and we are inundated by information that often gives us little time to sit back, reflect, but most importantly, to live in the moment.
Still, we all clamor for that elusive place that is our retreat from the world. It can be your house or simply a special place in your house. Home buyers clamor for the newest “must-have”, the ‘open-plan’ concept. Tear down the walls so the kitchen can blend into the dining area, the family-room, and the rest of the downstairs. Keep everything in your sightlines. I guess the idea is to promote togetherness, but does it really do that?
Sensory overload and openness are the enemy of a sense of place. When a baby first enters this world, they are tightly blanketed to mimic the feeling of still being in the womb. With open housing concepts, children and grown-ups still migrate to their bedrooms at the first opportunity. Many years ago, some good friends built a gorgeous house in a town of massively large homes. Their house was beautiful but deceptively smaller when viewed from the street. All the rooms were large, except for the library which was the smallest room in the house. Despite a finished basement with everything two young kids could want, the young children always migrated into that library. They told their parents that was the room where they felt the most comfortable in.
As adults, it is more than physical structures that create that unique sense of place. When I walk through certain neighborhoods I am drawn to certain houses over others. It might be the way a street- light juxtaposes with the light streaming from an upstairs room. I have experienced this feeling more often in Europe where cityscapes are built more to pedestrian scale than many American cities and suburbs. Sitting on a window seat on a rainy day, or a blizzard or gazing upon a lighted window, walking our neighborhood has often produced that sense of belonging, a sense of place.
The lights of shops, narrow residential streets, dimming streetlights, a gazebo, a town square tend to project people to that special place. I think that is why so many of us love Hallmark Christmas movies or why “Willoughby” is my favorite Twilight Zone episode. They make us all yearn for that place where we all feel that we have arrived home.
