Home

       

Today I am composing a post from the air, having just returned from a reunion with some amazing friends in Portland. I learned that Oregon has great food, great wine, and lots of people in plaid and beanies.

As I travel, I always find myself pondering the concept of home. I know many people have one place they always define as 'home', whether or not they live there. Some people find themselves checking the weather in another part of the country even when they're gone, feeling like a trip to a certain airport is a flight home - even if its just a one hour layover. Home is deeply embedded in them, the one place that feels like a favorite sweatshirt, comfortable and familiar, a place where you can pick up right where you left off even if years go by in the interim between visits.

I think I relate to this on some level. Dallas is my hometown - where I live, where I was raised, a home base during the rootless years of college where everyone exists in constant flux. I am used to the highways, the summer heat. I know where the good restaurants are and how to find parking in the lot at North Park Mall. But I think for me, 'home' is a more complicated concept than one city. I find that pieces of certain places break off and embed themselves into my soul, that 'home' is not just Dallas but an amalgamation of a dozen places and times, a ball of longing in my heart. It's not always places I've lived, or visited for long. There are some places I feel are distinctly not home, where I don't belong. But others speak to me, they feel like something I've been missing and have now found.

Florence, of course, where I lived for an idyllic five months, is one. I know where the supermarket is, I know how to pick the right train and talk to the cashier at the caffe and where I can get the best food in the city, from the restaurant on the quiet back street with no name posted, just a sign with a joker dancing on it. Whenever I see photos from someone else's trip, my heart hurts with the longing to walk those streets and taste that wine and breathe the air that smells like garlic and history and life. Boston is another of these places. I haven't visited often, but my parents lived there after they first married. In a way, that makes it feel like I belong there on some level too. I love to walk to downtown, to take the train to Cambridge, to see the swan boats in the Boston Commons. The feeling of the city is so me, quiet and yet energized, like you're stepping into something sacred in the heart of where America was conceived. And Norman, of course, where I went to school for three years, a quiet college town with the best sushi I've ever had - no joke. A surprising underground hipster scene, an annual renaissance fair, the best football experience the NCAA has to offer (no, I am not accepting counter arguments).

There are others as well - Dublin, Paris, Beijing, Chattanooga, Austin - places where I have family, places I have heritage, places that sing to me, all a part of me. Each is home in its own way, a place where I belong. I hope that heaven is all of them in one and more, a brilliant mix of all the things I love, all the rightness, all the joy. Home is people I love, of course, but home is also where my heart feels right, content, at peace. I belong in more than one place. And my spirit can't wait to discover them all, traveling this world, fitting pieces of the puzzle together, building a picture of my heart out of tiny fragments of this beautiful world.