Home is Wherever I'm with my Parents

Does everyone know that song by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, or was that only my suburb?

This essay was inspired by a prompt from Year of Extraordinary Writing, a year-long writing workshop that is open to join here.

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Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros was a band with no fans.

If they’ve released a single track since the late aughts, no one has noticed. If they’ve ever produced a full album, I don’t know what it’s called. And still, if you put me on stage with the Magnetic Zeros themselves, none of whom anyone could name, I’d give you an irresistible performance of “Home,” singing both halves of the duet and the whistle parts with alarming accuracy. 

It’s unclear to me if this song is universally known or if its popularity within the microcosm of my midwest suburb led me to believe it was a bigger hit than it ever was, but since there’s a Glee version of it, I’m hoping you know it. If you don’t know it and you don’t care to listen, consider a man with long hair and a woman with short bangs, perhaps two distant cousins of Matt and Kim, only with slightly more twang. Consider an unplaceable feeling of nepotism or corporate sponsorship. That’s what “Home” sounds like. 

The duo on lead vocals—Mr. Sharpe and one of the Zeros, I presume—has a certain voice quality you just can’t shake. The masculine half sings like he’s never blown his nose. His voice almost pushes The Goofy Movie when he lists all the things that please him—hot and heavy, pumpkin pie, cotton candy, Jesus Christ. He has the cleaner pronunciation though, while his other half sometimes sings something closer to “hahm,” especially when stretching the word into three syllables on the chorus—let me come ha-ah-aohme. Top it off with the whistling interlude that infected every indie pop song of the era and you have the standout track from every high school grad party slideshow. The hook still tastes like bug spray and first times and Portillo’s Italian beef. Home is wherever I’m with you. 

I like the sentiment that home is a person, something living and breathing and movable. It’s familiar for someone like me, who dealt with separation anxiety from the age of eight to well past eighteen. If you’re thinking, “isn’t separation anxiety a condition seen in toddlers and dogs?” The answer is yes. I used to think we curbed it in fifth grade when my mom cut out dozens of pink felt hearts, cut them in half, and pinned them to all of my clothes, carrying the other side in her pocket. “It’s like Mama’s always with you.” Genius. The Zoloft prescription probably helped, too. By the time I reached middle school, I was a mostly normal kid who got picked up halfway through sleepovers so she didn’t have to sleep under a different roof than her mom and dad. Normal! In high school, I still preferred my parents’ company over most of my peers, and when it was time to choose a college, I safely followed my sister to the faraway land of northwest Indiana, exactly one hour and eighteen minutes away. Not before considering community college, though, until I realized “because I’d get to hang out with my dad more” wasn’t quite enough of a reason to withdraw my acceptance from Valparaiso University. 

Socially, I was humiliatingly unready for college. I dreaded the thought of someone asking me to do something collegiate like join a club or throw a frisbee on the quad. I had friends at home—why make new ones? Two months before move-in, I bawled through every portion of orientation that separated me from my mom, and when the first day of programming concluded with an optional social event, I begged her to take me back to the hotel with her. No luck. She insisted on me doing the overnight in the dorms with the other kids. And by kids, I mean 18 year olds. Adult people. Not toddlers or dogs. 

Things got better with practice and time. I joined some clubs, made some friends, declined all offers to play frisbee. My junior year, I even studied abroad…in California. It felt like a world away to me. Now, I travel almost constantly, moving cities every three months or so. Each one starts like orientation all over again, but I make new friends and go to new places, and slowly, the people around me start to feel safer, like I could reach into their pockets and pull out a well-worn half of a pink felt heart. They know me and I know them, and being known is the warm beating heart of being home. 

Last night, I looked into Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, retracing the 2010’s for a lost hit or a bit of Page Six worthy gossip. What I found was a website that is no longer registered, a Wikipedia page listing them as ‘still active,’ and festival billings no later than 2020. Some sources say the band broke up, but not much from the mouth of Edward himself, although that was a stage name, apparently. The Wikipedia page is pretty thorough. I tripped through article after article of the band’s origins and the musical pursuits of each individual member…why? I don’t know. Because I could, and because Alex Ebert deserves to be known. That’s the real name of the man, the myth, the lead singer who allegedly kicked Jade, his vocal partner, out of the band via email after 7 years performing together. Jade and Alexander, the duo we eavesdrop on in the spoken interlude of “Home,” have long since parted ways.  

Still, they’re preserved together in this song, this one good song from an otherwise forgettable band, the kick-drum-tambourine boom chick hit I’ll forever know the words to. A song that, appropriately and perhaps needlessly stated, sounds like home. An overheard conversation between two lovers. Distant laughter. Voices you sometimes like and sometimes don’t. Predictable, but not without surprises. Somewhere we return because if nothing else, we like the familiar. 

That’s why, after closing out 2022 in Colorado, I came back here for the spring. Because I know it. It’s why, despite moving cities every few months, I tend to wander toward Chicago in the summer. Lake Michigan is beautiful, and my parents still keep a room just for me, despite having downsized to a townhome. It’s still my bedroom. It’s still waiting for me, like a sleepover with my parents every time I’m back in town, except we’re all under the same roof, and no one has to pick me up halfway through.