Home

Home.

Webster defines home as "a place one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household."

As a child and well into adulthood, I frequently said, “I wanna go home.” I most often said this when I was already technically 'home.' Maybe this came from an abiding sense of not belonging or a feeling of never fitting in. Whatever the case, I always longed for somewhere I had perhaps never even been, or somewhere I hoped to return to.

Home, for me, is not a house. Houses can come and go. Or they can be taken. I lived in three rented houses that were sold with only 30 days notice to leave. I lived in a house constructed by toxic drywall that had to be gutted. I lived in someone else’s house that was contingent on my relationship status and regardless of lofty conversations of sweat equity still had to be vacated in a matter of days. Houses can be destroyed by floods and fires, hurricanes and hatred. They can be ripped apart from the inside out by anger and disrespect.

Home, for me, is not a family because people come and go. Some people choose to leave and some people don’t. Either way their presence is ephemeral. Whether you lose them to life or to death, people are always meant to be lost.

Home, for me, is not where the heart is though it certainly improves your existence when you show up authentically in the space you inhabit. But sometimes the space you inhabit does not permit such authenticity.

Home, for me, is a place I carry inside. It’s Jackson Square in New Orleans where a brass band plays “Hurricane Season” even when it’s not. It’s a bench in Savannah, Georgia where Spanish moss sways overhead to the tune of fountains and horses’ hooves on the breeze. It’s an ice cream cone at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. A sunrise at Stonehenge. It’s a ferry on the Irish Sea, a patch of moss on the Appalachian trail, the smell of fir in the Smoky Mountains. It’s the endless sky just outside of Des Moines where the beige of dry fields and the gray of asphalt sets the stage for big and bold and beautiful blue. It’s windmills in Southern Illinois and solar panels west of Atlanta. It’s even a stretch of highway in Ohio that you never think is going to end.

Home, for me, is a memory tucked away like a chipmunk in a patch of leaves, ready to scurry out of hiding at a moment’s provocation. It’s bicycles in Giverny, swings in the backyard, hiking in Maine, or convincing a stranger to buy his wife a hat at an outdoor market in Charlottesville. It’s a smile on someone’s face because you walked in the room; it’s the wag of a tail or a cat’s purr. It’s a child running to hug you after months of separation. It’s laughter at nothing. Music that elicits goosebumps or tears. Art that reminds us of how beautifully talented human beings are when they are focused on being and not doing.

Home, for me, is a place I have access to at will. When I’m at work or asleep or mowing the grass. It isn’t dependent on something outside of me. It’s only dependent on my acknowledgement of its existence, my appreciation of its necessity. It isn’t a place I have to long for or dream of. I no longer have to say, “I wanna go home,” because I’m already there.

It’s everywhere I’ve ever been. It’s everywhere I’ll ever go.

It’s everyone I’ve ever known and everyone I’ll ever know.

But mostly, it’s who I’ve always been and who I’ll always be.