What is "home?"

The majority of the time they were here, virtually all of it, they couldn't wait to go "home." This was very, very weird and alien for me to hear them say because, after all, this whole time I've been looking forward to them coming "home." So finally I said, "But this IS 'home.'" I was kind of expecting a response that went something to the tune of "...different kind of home..." "...new life..." "...our own home..." But that's kind of not what I got. I was rather amazed (and at the same time not) at how not "home" they felt this place was to them.

Anyway, that's just the preface. It's not really the meat of what I've been thinking about. Then they asked me if I didn't feel that way when I had moved away for the year and some odd months when I lived in Wooster. I didn't have much of an answer. That was a very, very different time. My life as I knew it had been very deliberately and abruptly disrupted and all I really wanted then was to hide. In the beginning, I don't know that I looked at it in terms of "home" or not. I think it was just the difference between the place where I used to live with people I loved and the place where I was now hiding, alone. For a long time, the concept of "home" was not really a factor. I didn't visit much to the place that I used to live because it was too painful and really just too much of a hassle. I wasn't in the place where I was now hiding much (though my little apartment there was quite adorable and under any other circumstances it would've been blissful) because there was no point in being there alone except to sleep. I worked a lot. Sadly to say, mainly because of the type of work it was, work was more "home" than anywhere else. It was the place I went to be around people that at first I tolerated, and then grew to like a lot. These are all just things I've very recently come to know about that time in my life.

So then some time passed and I got tired of being alone so I started to visit the place where I used to live a little more often. I was so bored being alone and the pain was beginning to fade. In some senses, the circumstances were improving and a new type of "normal" was setting in. Then later, I came back every weekend to spend with my family and with Jeff. At that point I lost use for the place that I went to hide. I enjoyed coming back to things that were familiar to me. I much preferred to drive on the roads I'd known since I was a child than to get lost in the smallish towns that I now lived in and near. I lived in Wooster for 8 months before I knew there was a K-Mart there. Thank God the Wal-Mart was too big to miss. The nearest mall was at least an hour in any direction. The roads took about a week before the snow plows really cleared them after a good storm. I was not at "home." I wanted to come back to "home" now. I'd be willing to forsake familiarity for the prospect of something better but I hadn't found something better. I had no need to get any more familiar with my new place than I already was, which I found out more and more wasn't as much as I'd thought.

Home is here for me. I have a hard time understanding people like my brother who can't hardly stand to take another breath here or Nikki and Kyle who'd so quickly prefer to be elsewhere.

That's not to say that I plan to stay here forever. I'm not terribly fond of the weather here and quite frankly I find the terrain to be extremely uninspiring. We have no mountains, no ocean, no real beaches, no major landmarks, no major historical sites... My spirit is too... I don't know, too something to stay "home" forever. I eventually want to be in a place that has a spirit and a history of its own that my spirit can latch onto. And preferably that place will never see enough snowfall to where I ever have to worry about driving on an icy road ever again. We'll see about that, though.

Home, for me, is here.

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Before And After

Would I get a discount if I birthed the baby in the store? - 5/16/05
The end is near? - 5/13/05
The progession of me - 5/10/05
Cleaning update - 5/7/05
Pre-nesting - 5/7/05