Memory

The work of making home is memory making; sensory reference points like sounds and smells create feelings that become stored in the memory banks as “home.” We often process what home is through remembering and recalibrating the perceived attributes of our first homes. Memories of homes stay with us throughout our lives as we make and remake home as we age. In this section, Memory, the passage of time and the process of aging are recurring motifs. Through personal stories, photo essays, conversations, and reflections on “making home” in art and in life, the contributors reveal the potency of the past in shaping what we call home.

The Population Reference Bureau reports that “the US population is older today than it has ever been.”[2] The United States Census Bureau found that, “in 2020, about 1 in 6 people in the United States were age 65 and over. In 1920, this proportion was less than 1 in 20.”[3] The amount of available housing has to increasingly expand in order to provide for our nation’s growing population of people over age sixty-five. To consider what it means to make home in the United States today is to consider how people across the nation’s geographical expanse will deal with the question of home as they age.

Connections between how we make home and how we care for memories were quite apparent to me on a recent visit to a senior living community, which I toured as a prospective home for myself, a fifty-something-year-old, and for a loved one who is over eighty. This community falls somewhere between a resort property and a sophisticated dormitory—on all counts, it is an amenity-rich residential experience. Although I knew it would likely be above my budget, I was curious about whether this type of home was something I might access now or aspire to in the future.

A major barrier to securing housing as we age is affordability. Do we stay in the homes we have been in, in some cases for decades, despite the fact that our family size may have shrunk due to children moving out, the family changing, and so on? If we live alone, is it appealing to consider cohabiting in our senior years, for companionship and cost savings? How many of us can afford costly senior living communities? How does the need for caregiving change our experience and requirements of home? And, perhaps most significantly, when we leave the homes we have known, what allows us to make home elsewhere?

Notes:

[1] Lucille Clifton, “why some people be mad at me sometimes,” Next: New Poems (Brockport, NY: BOA Editions, Ltd., 1987).

[2] Regarding demographic changes, the Population Reference Bureau also notes: “The older population is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. . . . The rising diversity among older Americans can’t match the rapidly changing racial/ethnic composition of those under age 18, creating a diversity gap between generations.” Mark Mather and Paola Scommegna, “Fact Sheet: Aging in the United States,” Population Reference Bureau, January 9, 2024, https://www.prb.org/resources/fact-sheet-aging-in-the-united-states/.

[3] Zoe Caplan, “U.S. Older Population Grew from 2010 to 2020 at Fastest Rate Since 1880 to 1890,” United States Census Bureau, May 25, 2023, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/05/2020-census-united-states-older-population-grew.html.

Excerpt from  Making Home: Belonging, Memory, and Utopia in the 21st Century, (Cooper Hewitt |  The MIT Press, 2025) published in companion with  Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial  (New York, Nov. 2024-Aug. 2025)