Is a Hotel a Home?

Home means something different for everyone. Is home a house you have lived in since you were a newborn newly brought home from the hospital? Or, is home the place you lived for a short while. Can a home be a hotel?

What does home mean to me?

Home can be a hotel. A caravan. A rental house. A house built for you. A house you are staying in.

Home can be a hotel room — my family lived in a hotel for one month as newly arrived immigrants from England. The Holiday Inn in Edison, NJ, was our home. I cannot imagine living in a hotel with a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old, in a foreign country, with no car, and no friends nearby. My mother did it because she had to. She had no choice. My dad took a job as a nuclear engineer at a firm in NYC. My mother, sister, and I came with him. While my dad worked we stayed at the hotel.

Here’s what I know about the hotel:

• It was a hotel with a central courtyard grassy area. All the hotel room were positioned around the courtyard. The hotel was one story. 
• I watched TV for the first time — I think I watched some TV in England , but in the U.S. I was introduced to Sesame Street and Romper Room. I have a recollection of having a pair of Romper Room flower pot shoes. You stood on the flower pots and held on to a pair of strings that were attached to the flowerpots.
• My mother had no car, so had to walk to the store with my sister in the stroller and me walking beside her. after two days, the flimsy English "pushchair" was no match for the uneven roads my mother encountered.
• My mother went shopping every day for breakfast and dinner food.
• My mother made breakfast in the room every day.
• My mother took us to the hotel restaurant for a hearty lunch.
• She fed us dinner in the room.
• We were asleep shortly after my dad got home from work.
• My parents would leave us in the hotel room while they went to the restaurant across the courtyard. I’m not sure I would feel comfortable doing this, but it was a different era and people were not so worried about child abduction, etc.
• I don’t recall leaving the hotel to go to our rental home, but we did.
• The rental home was a 3 bedroom split-level house with a large yard.

The large yard was a nice change of pace from the cramped hotel room. Subtted to the Away We Go contest on http://www.twittermoms.com/forum/topics/away-we-go-contest-tell-us?utm_source=Twittermoms+Member+Newsletter&utm_campaign=839c05d519-TMWN_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email The contest is part of the promotion for a Sam Mendes movie Away We Go. 

About the Movie:
Director Sam Mendes and written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, brings us a fresh tale about a couple who is expecting their first child. As they travel around the U.S. in order to find a perfect place to start their family, they encounter misadventures and fresh connections with an assortment of relatives and old friends who help them discover "home" on their own terms. In select theatres June 5th, opens nationwide June 25th!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 1:08 pm and is filed under English Memories, Entertainment, family strife. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.