There's No Place Like Home

In the midst of my Sunday evening cleaning and organizing, the song issuing from my laptop speakers brought on an interlude of introspection.

I drove 300 miles from the place I call home

Upon hearing those lyrics I began thinking. Thinking about how my past roommates have always used "home" to refer to wherever their parents are. Thinking about how "home" was wherever I happened to be living. Thinking about what really felt like home.

Some families put their roots down in one place, one town, one house, and stay there for years. Other families move from place to place for whatever reason. My family fell into the second category. We moved a lot. I could count on the fact that eventually we would be packing everything up and moving to some other place.

That's what each new dwelling became: some other place. Each time we moved I felt less connected with our "home." Even today, I never finish unpacking when I move. There are always boxes that sit in a closet waiting for the next time we load up the moving truck. I want to decorate, find a place for everything, make the space my own, but there is always a little voice that says, "What's the point? You'll just have put it back in a box when your lease is up."

My sisters and I have often talked about the two places that we identify as home, the two places that have never changed: our grandparents' homes. Little things change as they do in every house, but the "Grandpa and Grandma's house" that I have known since I could first remember will always be there. Every time I visit my grandparents, I know that the beds will be in the same place, the cereal will be in the same cupboard, the same grandfather clock will chime, the same radio station will turn on at 5 AM, the same family heirlooms will be prominently displayed, the same sliced cheese will be in it's special container, the same playhouse will be visible in the backyard, the same nightlight will be in the bathroom, the same pictures will be on the wall.

That is when I am home.