Home(s)

Home is where the heart is.

It's usually a faded, framed cross-stitch hung askew in country Texans' entry halls. It's a cup of hot chocolate when you're back for Christmas and a handful of sparklers on the 4th of July. It's about returning to a place, and giving your heart framework between it's four walls.

I remember telling someone a few years ago -- smugly, defiantly, desperately -- that "I live in D.C., but Texas will always be my home." The jigjagged borders of the country--I mean state--where I was born were the scaffolding holding up the person being built. I gripped onto Texas to explain my quirks, calm my fears, and most of all, to always be there as my emergency exit if I ever found myself in a life I didn't like.

And then I said it once. 

I slipped.

In the middle of booking a return flight to D.C., I told my mom the flight number and said, "Yeah, I get home -- I mean, I mean, I get back to D.C. around...."

Was D.C. home?

Then, worse -- I was in Texas for a few weeks in February and Bev wrote on my Facebook wall: 

Bev Cameron

‎5 more sleeps until you are home! So excited....

February 14 at 7:42am ·  ·  · See Friendship

Was Turramurra home?

This week, I've been a little sad, because I've realized that I have no home. Or rather, I don't have one home. I don't have one place that I walk in the door and breathe deeply and think "Aahhhhh. I'm home." I used to have that. But I don't anymore.

What I have instead is many homes. I have many places where I can walk in the door and breathe deeply and think, "Aahhhhh. I'm home." The thing about having many homes is that you're never in all of them at once. Which means there's always a tension between the home-ness where you are and the home-ness somewhere else. There are people and there is love in all of the homes. And you're always home, and yet, you're never home at the same time.

I realized that in searching for my one true home, I had lost sight of the truth: that I am a girl who has many true homes. And for me, the joy of having many homes outweighs the pain of not having one. Any day.

Turns out I'd been reading the old adage wrong all along. I'd been searching for my heart in the floorboards of a home -- hoping that a place would speak to me and tell me, finally, that it was where I belonged.

But "Home is where the heart is" means home comes with you.
It means, listen to your heart and you'll find your home.
Or your homes.