Amman - Children grow up, set up homes of their own and become absorbed in the details of their lives, but the feeling at the family home remains different. The moment one of them walks through the door, they look for their mother and father in their usual places, then head to their familiar spot on the same sofa. Amid the smell of food and family stories, they recover something of childhood and the spontaneity free from life's complications.
اضافة اعلان
Memories that return a person to their first details
After a long day at work, Mazen comes home, puts his keys where he has put them since he was a young man, and heads automatically to the same corner where he always sat. He studied abroad, and he is now married with his own home, a job, responsibilities and children.
Describing how he feels on entering his parents' house, Mazen says: "Every corner of this house makes me feel safe. My steps know the way by themselves, and without thinking I sit in my seat, as I have since I was young. Everything is as it was. My mother's hand cream is still beside her on the table, as it has been since my childhood, and next to it is her prayer beads and the Holy Quran she reads from, which was printed in memory of my grandfather after he passed away."
He adds: "In the kitchen, the smell of the food the family was used to eating still greets me, and in the living room the conversations repeat themselves, and I know how they begin and how they end."
He explains that anything that happens in the family home opens a door to a memory that everyone thought they had forgotten. A question from his mother about the food he likes, a remark from his father about his lateness, or a light argument with a brother or sister brings back something of the child he once was, even if he enters the house this time as a father, or as someone others have come to rely on.
Nostalgia and a renewed sense of security
Counsellor and educational psychologist Raida Al-Kilani explains what Mazen describes, noting that the family home has the power to return a person to their first details.
She says it is not merely a place where an individual lived for years, but a space tied to the formation of their personality, their first fears, joys and disagreements, and the small habits they may not have noticed the importance of until after they left.
She explains that these details, even after a long time without thinking about them, return to memory as soon as a person sits in their familiar place or hears a sentence they used to hear in childhood.
Al-Kilani adds that when children grow up and leave their parents' home, their relationship with it changes. Access becomes linked to a visit, a family occasion, or a quick stop to check on the parents.
A son or daughter may stay only a few hours, but these hours sometimes carry a different feeling from the one they experience elsewhere during their day. They do not need to explain their history or reintroduce themselves.
In this home, they sit comfortably, open the fridge, make their coffee the way they like it, take off their shoes and stretch out on the sofa.
The first place in shaping children's personalities
She continues: "In the family home, stories are renewed and repeated whenever the family gathers." It is enough for one sibling to mention an old incident for the others to recall additional details, and an ordinary sitting turns into a short journey through past years. They disagree over what happened, make playful accusations, and laugh at things that were embarrassing at the time.
She stresses that the family home is the home of the individual's identity, and it is natural for it to be a house of memories, with its details becoming doorways to stories that are told. At the time something happens, a person may not think it important, but as life speeds up and fills with worries and responsibilities, they discover that a passing incident that ended long ago, and whose details they know well, now makes them feel secure.
She explains that the unknown is what provokes fear and curiosity in people, while what is past, even if it once carried feelings of fear or sadness, is now understood to have passed and ended, and may sometimes become a funny story to be told.
Sociology specialist Dr. Mohammad Jreibee agrees with Al-Kilani that the familiar can be a source of security for a person. It is known in its details, unlike new things that may cause apprehension because of what the person does not know about them.
He explains that the return to childhood is not limited to clear memories. Sometimes it hides in details people do not notice until they are away from them: the smell of a dish a mother prepares the same way, the sound of an old door, a particular spot on the sofa, a cupboard that still holds some belongings, or the way a father asks about his children's wellbeing even after each has their own life.
Longing for a childhood free of responsibilities
After years of independence, children discover that they still ask their mother to make the dish they loved as children, or that they open the fridge at the family home without thinking, unlike what they do in their own homes. A daughter who is used to organising her day herself may return to sharing small details with her mother, or sit beside her sister and talk about things she had no time to discuss all week.
Jreibee stresses that this spontaneity does not mean children give up their maturity when they return to the family home. Rather, the place gives them a chance to shed some of the roles they carry outside it. A person who makes difficult professional decisions all day, or who bears responsibility for their family and children, finds in their parents' home a space where they do not need to be strong all the time or know the answer to every question.
He points out that in many families, roles among siblings also shift. The youngest, who once relied on an older brother, may now be the experienced one everyone turns to, while the older brother returns to teasing him the old way.
Two sisters revisit their small past disagreements and laugh at a rivalry that once occupied much of their childhood. These details may seem simple, but they give the relationship continuity, linking the people they used to be with the people they have become.
Parents' care is an ongoing need for children
Mazen's parents have their own story about his return home. His mother, who is used to seeing her children every day, finds in their short visits a chance to check on details she cannot learn about over the phone.
She says: "I ask about how they are, and why their tone of voice was different on a particular day when they spoke to me on the phone, or what is on their minds. They cannot go back to their homes without a tray of sweets or the food they love, to eat whenever they like and share with their families."
She insists that what she does for her children is not excessive attention, but, for her, one of the ways she continues to express her care for them.
As for his father, he says he waits for the visit to learn what has changed in his children's lives, to share an opinion or experience with them, or to sit with them in a comfortable silence that needs little talk. Some fathers express their longing directly, while others show it through practical questions or interest in the details of the journey, their work, their car and their children.
Ways of expressing care differ, but the presence of the children in the house brings back a familiar rhythm, according to Mazen's father.
Jreibee points out that this lovely picture of the family home is not experienced by everyone. Returning to the family home may not always be easy, and it can carry complications.
Some children find themselves facing old expectations that do not fit their present lives, or feel that their parents still treat them as if they have not grown up, while they want their decisions and independence to be respected.
In such cases, the relationship needs a space of nostalgia. He stresses that the family home can remain a place of belonging without becoming a space in which children's independence is erased, and children can keep their own lives without feeling that going back home is an extra burden on them. Bonds are not always measured by the number of hours children spend at home, but also by the care, the ability to listen and the honest communication that remain between them.
Stories and laughter that are present and renewed
He adds that the value of this place grows over time, even when its details change. Furniture may be replaced, rooms rearranged, and things that were part of everyday life may disappear, but some marks remain enough to bring back memories. When children open an old box, or find a school photo or a toy their mother kept, they feel that long years have not vanished entirely, but remain scattered across the corners of the house and its belongings.
Finally, he stresses that the family home cannot bring back the years as they were, nor stop children from changing or being absorbed in their own lives, but it keeps a thread connecting what they were with what they have become. A person does not need to start their story again, because part of it is already known and kept in the faces, conversations and places.
However big children grow, small details remain inside them that find their way back to the first home. Their addresses may change and their responsibilities may expand, and they may become the ones welcoming their own children into independent homes, but when they return to their mother's and father's house, even for a few hours, they find a place that lets them simply be children.
They recover their first innocence, sit in the same corner, laugh at the same stories, and leave feeling that some places are inhabited not only by memories, but also by the part of us that remains, however much life changes.
