Home…in this day, it has such a strange context for me.  We got Home yesterday, that is to say, we arrived in the town that we lived in before we went on the road.  I still have houses here, but other people are living in them, so they are not Home.  The only family left here, in this little town, is my dad, but yet, people we saw when we got back asked, how long are you going to be Home?

Home is wherever we are, it’s where the semi is parked at the moment.  It’s not NorCal where Rich is from, it’s not Idaho, where I’m from, it is where we are together.  None of our kids live in the same place, so a congregation of majority doesn’t count as Home either.  We have spread the five biological children we have over four states, Minnesota, Alaska, Idaho and California – although one NorCal, one SoCal – so that might as well be separate states.  Our siblings, only one each, are in Virginia and Arizona.  So what is Home?

This is particularly important today as our one college student is trying to figure out where to go Home for the holidays.  But it’s just not as simple as all that.  Rich and I are spending the next month in Montana, but that’s just temporary.

As a child, my dad was in the military, so Home was ever moving then too.  The only time we thought about the concept was my first grade year when dad was stationed in Vietnam, he moved us Home before he left.  Home then was my mother’s hometown of Shelby, Michigan.  We had grandparents, aunts and uncles and about a zillion cousins there.  But a year later when he returned safely, we were gone again, never really with an opportunity to go Home again.

The constants I know about Home, in our current society, the concept changes daily.  We are mobile, but we are connected.  Home is wherever you hang your hat, home is where you are comfortable, home is where people love you.  We have great friends all over the country that are close enough to be family, so for me Home is wherever and whenever I am with someone who cares about me.  Welcome Home.