Home

What do you think of when you think of Home? I imagine there would probably be clean carpets and white walls, refrigerators filled with tasty leftovers, and cable television servicing multiple tvs in multiple living rooms maybe even in multiple homes. It sounds safe and inviting and fulfilling.

Admittedly, when I think of Home, I don’t quite have these idyllic images. My Home spans many houses, some filled with my mom and grandmother and sister in a modest-sized townhouse in the East Bay, some filled with my Dad and stepmom and sister on a wooded street in Iowa’s capital, and others filled with tiny apartments with tiny rooms in cities filled with strangers. In lots of these Homes, there was laughter (so much!) and dinners around a table. Other times, there was yelling,  tears, and a revolving door of situations, people, emotions, and outcomes. To say my Home was unstable makes it sound like I suffered. But to say it was stable discredits the life lessons received.

Home for me has never been one place; it’s been piece mailed together. Home is the house I lived in when my parents separated. Home is the house my grandmother let my sister, my mom, and I live in when the first one could no longer hold us. Home is on Ingersoll Ave in Des Moines that took us in when the one before had to take on new tenants. Home is Iowa, the place in which I grew UP. Home is California, where half my family awaits. Home is Chicago, Hotel Francisco, and my bed, to which I return every night (yes, every night). Home is a stepmom and stepdad, home is a divorce, home is a marriage, home is a neighbor, home is a graduation, home is a heartbreak, home is a sickness, home is a rebirth, home is a haven, home is revered and feared, always a haven.

Home isn’t one person; it isn’t one unit. It was never a family united, and it will never be found in one person exclusively. Home is little bits and fragments of memories and hopes and thoughts and confessions strewn across a country and a lifetime. The moment the search for Home stops and we begin to recognize this moment as a little sentence of the larger chapter comprising the book, is the moment missing home stops hurting.