What makes a house a home – and vice versa

We all know the emotional pull of home, of how the longer we live in a place the more it becomes part of us.

This is felt deeply when one returns home after even a short absence, a sensation that stirs a love born of the security and comfort of family.

That shared space where you watch each other grow becomes sacred, the attachment powerful and enduring – even for a standard, double-fronted brick house that looks as unremarkable as all the other standard, double-fronted brick houses on the block.

Yet when the time finally came to bid farewell to the family home – the suburban shrine that had been the centre of our lives for over half a century – it turned out to be surprisingly painless.

The tears. The skipping of the heart. The melancholy that usually accompanies the closing of a chapter in life. They didn’t materialise.

Admittedly, this feeling – or lack of feeling – was strange. And reflecting on it was revealing.

The decision to sell was hard but necessary as unavoidable circumstances needed to be confronted and resolved.

With the gravity of the move came strong waves of nostalgia.

Hallways, walls, rooms, corners, cupboards and closets so utterly familiar now echoed with memories and mixed emotions – happy, sad, tender, bad – knowing they would soon be stripped bare before being handed on to new owners.

The day of sale was emotional, the sense of finality almost over-powering. This was it. The place was gone.

So, too – somehow, surprisingly – was the sense of connection. The house that had become a home had now turned back into a house.

The emotional twilight zone of reminiscence that had existed between the decision to sell and the conclusive clap of the auctioneer’s hand was over.

As the reality of the settlement date set in sentimentality gave way to sheer practicality.

The place needed to be cleared out – a monumental task involving grand logistics and intricate co- ordination.

Detailed schedules were drawn up; snap decisions were made about who would take what, where it would be stored, what was to be kept, what was to be thrown out.

There was no time to dwell or get misty-eyed. Precious relics that held so much meaning were now objects that needed to be compacted into boxes and storage tubs, then relocated.

As the place was hollowed out, its rooms denuded, the walls now blank, all sense of home vanished.

It was now just a cold shell waiting for its new inhabitants. What would they do with the house? We didn’t care. The reason was clear.

We’d left the house but had taken our home with us.

The life we’d given it would live on in memory and radiate from all the things now ensconced in our various abodes.

Vases, lamps, paintings, clocks, childhood soup bowls, photographs, bits of furniture and assorted trinkets would forever serve as reminders of how a home, once a physical place, now resided in the hearth of pure memory.