“A man’s home is his castle.” I looked that one up because here in Southern California, we seem so taken with the idea our home has to be some kind of castle. And regardless of the social circle you travel in, there’s always that unwritten rule to make sure your castle is big, considered so by others, and if possible, bigger than the others.

So it was curious to me that in a recent interview with famous English pop singer Kate Bush, when asked about the historic castle where she lives, she mentioned not a word about expansive rooms, winding staircases, flowing curtains, or lavish decorations, and, in fact, not one thing about the castle at all. Instead, she spoke only — and almost reverently — of the beauty she could see from her window, looking out over the countryside and the sea, and the perfect sense of peace she felt, just sitting there.

Okay, it was Kate Bush, and that was England, but it seems that no matter where we live, our sense of home has less to do with castles, and more to do with how we feel in that favorite place where we live or spend most of our time.

There’s a guy named Jack who lives in one of the tonier neighborhoods of our city, in 4,500 square feet of ocean-front real estate that, if for sale, would certainly be accompanied by words like “Highly Desired” and “Expansive Luxury”. Maybe so, but Jack prefers to hang out in the garage. Well, it’s not just any garage, because the inside is something like a well-manicured shrine to the American automobile, with antique oil bottles, hood ornaments, road maps, lighted signs, and miniature models. Standing in the middle of the room are the “pieces de resistance.” Not one, but two fully restored classic cars.

I asked him how he kept everything so immaculate, and Jack confided he didn’t actually do any of the restoration work there; he only bought things that were mostly perfect already. His own perfection, I could see, was in preserving a million memories of times when cars like these were so much a part of his family’s life. They still are. Jack continues the tradition started by his Dad, and nearly every square inch of the walls, even the inside of the garage doors, are covered with 8×10 inch frames featuring pictures of family members with their cars, with their kids, days at the beach, leaving for school dances, and decorated with tin cans and streamers on their way to honeymoons and families of their own.

Still, not one date can be seen on any of the photographs; instead, you have to know the particular model year of each car. And he does. He knows every last one of them. Jack says he pretty much lives out there because when the day is done, this is the one place where he can remember and feel all the things he wants to. It’s home.

Isabelle, who’s almost 10 and very in tune with palaces and make-believe castles, told me that if she were away from home, the place she’d keep thinking about is a funny little orange table in her kitchen where she eats her waffles in the morning, a snack after school and dinner at night with her family. That’s where she likes to be because most of the time, everybody’s home and they like to talk a lot and laugh at dumb things. Then I asked her one of those dumb, big-person questions, “How do you feel when you’re sitting there at the table?” She looked at me kind of funny, but her response was simple, honest, and perfect. “Just happy.”

Chris, a recently separated film editor moved into in his grandmother’s converted horse stable, a plain white paneled room with just enough space to pretend there’s a kitchen, a bedroom, a sitting area and a place to shave. At first he thought he’d suffocate from the tinyness of it all. But now, after a few months, he’d be careful about trading it away. “At night when I’m here,” he says quietly, “it’s my stuff, it’s my life, it’s… whatever I want to think about.” He doesn’t use the word home, but I get the sense that it’s as close to that feeling as he is going to have for some time. He knows that, and it’s important to him.

So, is there any way of understanding what makes a place a “home”? And if it’s not really about the castle, and more about a sense of place, what if you don’t have one? Can you find one…can you make one?

Willetta McCulloh is a partner with Environ Architecture in Long Beach. California. Beyond the firm’s ability to design amazing structures, they pride themselves on a deep understanding of how individuals interact with the spaces around them. “The characteristics of personal space, wherever it is, are often an entire mix of a person’s own life experiences,” said Willetta. “It’s about things that bring them joy, safety, calm, and for some, even a sense of personal power they simply can’t — or for some reason don’t — feel anywhere else.”

And maybe that’s why it’s so illusive. It’s pretty hard to figure out what can make us feel that “certain way” because it’s always some kind of crazy, mixed-up postion of how we’ve felt about hundreds of things in our life before. Maybe more.

One thing we know, however, is that our own perfect sense of home is as unique as a fingerprint. It’s our DNA. It’s why we insist on moving our chair back to where it was, even if it was only an inch or so out of place. It’s why our coffee has to be a certain temperature, in the same mug, and resting just to the right of the book we’re reading. It’s why we’ll probably never replace the worn out purple rug, or the table that’s just big enough for the phone and two remote controls.

I suppose in Southern California we may never be free of that unwritten obligation to keep working as hard as we can toward a bigger castle. But in the meantime, and even if we get there, most of us will still probably realize there’s that one space in some room that, for us, is “home”. And as difficult as it may be to figure out why that happens, Isabelle, who’s almost 10, has the feeling it’s probably because it makes us feel “Just happy.”