The Home We Carry, The Home We Create

Publisher's Note

For Hispanic Heritage Month, SVL asked members of our community one question: what does home mean to you? Executive Cultura Ambassador and author Jazmin Diaz answers with her senses first, the tortillas, the café con leche, the pólvora of las Fiestas in Degollado, and then with the home she and her husband built for their four children.

For a long time, if you had asked me where home was, I probably would have pointed to a place.

Degollado, Jalisco.

But the older I get, the more I realize that when I think about home, I don't first see a place.

I smell it.

Home is the smell of my Tía Esther's handmade tortillas in the morning when I lived in Degollado, warm and fresh, something so ordinary then that I couldn't have known how much I would later appreciate it.

Home is my Abuelita Rosa. The unmistakable smell of the Faros cigarettes she smoked mixed with the olive oil she put in her hair. A combination that may mean nothing to anyone else, but to me, smells like her and transports me back to her casa.

It's the fresh cow's milk my Papá Chuy would bring to the house from his rancho, for breakfast, or a warm café con leche later in the evening.

And home is the smell of pólvora. During las Fiestas in Degollado, we would gather in the Plaza to watch the castillos burn. I can still smell the powder in the air and remember the anticipation as sparks and colors lit up the night, waiting for the grand finale, when la corona would break free and fly high into the sky.

As a little girl, I didn't know those moments would later become precious memories that I would cherish for the rest of my life.

Home was something being created around me. I didn't think about who was making the tortillas, bringing home the milk, preparing the meals, preserving traditions, or creating the feeling that I belonged. I was simply living in it.

Then I became a mother. And my understanding of home changed.

My husband and I weren't simply creating a place for our four children to live. We were creating the backdrop of their childhood, the place where they would first experience family, culture, belonging, love, and tradition.

As a mother, I've come to understand that home should be the place where we can take our armor off.

The world will ask things of us. It will measure us, challenge us, disappoint us, and sometimes misunderstand us. There will be places where we feel we have to prove ourselves, protect ourselves, or become a certain version of ourselves to belong.

Home shouldn't be one of those places.

Home should be where we can exhale. Where we can rest without having to earn it. Where we can make mistakes, have a hard day, laugh too loudly, sit quietly, change our minds, and simply be who we are, the good, the bad, and the ugly, without judgment or scrutiny.

I can't protect my children from everything they will encounter beyond our doors. Nor should I. They have their own lives to live and their own lessons to learn.

But together, my husband and I could offer a space where all of us know we are loved before we accomplish anything, explain anything, or prove anything.

That, too, is home.

Of course, when you're raising a family, you don't always experience it so philosophically.

Life moves incredibly fast.

My Tía Esther probably wasn't making tortillas thinking, someday Jazmin will remember this.

Papá Chuy wasn't bringing fresh milk home because he was trying to create a core memory.

And my Abuelita Rosa certainly wasn't thinking that Faros cigarettes and olive oil would someday make her granddaughter smile.

They were simply living. And so were we.

I wonder now what my children will remember about the home my husband and I created.

I hope they'll remember all the cuddles, the way their dad and I loved having them close, all of us together, warm, safe, and perfectly content just being with one another. Or maybe hearing cumbias or Juan Gabriel will take them back to our kitchen, where the music filled the room while I made caldo de pollo, papas con chorizo, or another home-cooked meal.

Or perhaps, they'll remember our morning school drop-offs listening to Live 105, with Linkin Park, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Radiohead coming through the speakers. But Friday drop-offs were different. Fridays were for “Vivir Mi Vida.”

We'd turn up Marc Anthony in the Denali, and there we'd be, me and my four babies, singing our hearts out together on the way to school.

I can still hear their little voices. At the time, it was simply our Friday thing. I wasn't trying to create a tradition or a memory. We were just living it.

And maybe that's exactly how the memories we treasure most are made.

Then there were the holidays. Making tamales with my mom, their Tita, who always made special little “baby tamales” just for them. Gathering around the fireplace to watch Home Alone and Elf, the smell of cinnamon filling the house, with hot chocolate and pan dulce nearby. And suddenly, I understand my own childhood differently.

The tortillas. The fresh milk. The Plaza. The pólvora.

What felt ordinary then became extraordinary with time.

And now another generation is collecting its own version of home.

Their memories won't look exactly like mine, and they shouldn't. They are a blend of where we come from and who we've become.

México and the life we've built here. Spanish and English. Tamales and holiday traditions . Juan Gabriel and Radiohead.

The traditions passed down to us and the ones we've created along the way.

There is something beautiful about that. We don't simply inherit home.

We carry pieces of it forward. We add pieces of ourselves. And without always realizing it, we create something new for the generation that comes next.

My mom making “baby tamales” for her grandchildren is part of the same story as my Tía Esther making tortillas all those years ago. They did these things intentionally, to make others feel loved and special.

Different kitchens. Different generations. Same love.

So where is home really?

I've come to believe it isn't one house, one town, or even one country.

Home lives in us, in the people who shaped us and the people with whom we build our lives. It's in the traditions we inherit, the ones we create, and the seemingly ordinary moments that become extraordinary only after enough time has passed.

But home is also something more. It's the place where the armor can come off.

Where we can exhale. Where we are known, loved, and allowed to simply be.

So my invitation to you is simple:

Be present for the moment.

Stay at the table a little longer. Turn up the music. Sing in the car.

Make the recipe your grandmother taught you. Ask about the story you've already heard a hundred times. Notice the smells coming from the kitchen. Listen to the laughter, the chisme, and even the chaos.

Because while you're busy living your life, you may also be creating someone's definition of home.

The moments that feel ordinary today may one day become the memories you treasure most.

Be there for them while they're still happening.

More from the Home series

Two Flags, One Home by Eddie García

Where Home Really Is by Nancy Marmolejo

What Home Means to Me by Francisco Jiménez

Home, In Their Own Words by SVL Advisory Board

From Where We Started to Where We’re Going by Michael Archuleta

Sazón, Familia y Amor: The Flavors of Home by Angela Flores Robertson

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