Is This Home?

Home. What does it mean? Where is it?

In my life, I have lived in 4 cities. Three in Indiana, and now one in Ohio. None of them have felt like home. I've lived with family, with friends, alone. Alone, a lot, by choice. And none of those places ever felt like home.

I've traveled a bit, but not as much as most people I know. I've seen New York City in the spring, Louisiana and Texas in June, and Wisconsin in January. I've never left the country. I've wanted to, but circumstances have just never jelled so that it has happened. I want to travel. I want to see Ireland and New Zealand, Wales and Australia, but not in that order. I want to see the canals in Venice, the monoliths on Easter Island, and the moose in Alaska. (I know I could see a moose in the zoo, but I'd really like to see one walking down the main street of some tiny Alaskan town, ala Northern Exposure.)

But none of the places I've traveled have felt like home.


As I was leaving Wisconsin this January, I finally realized that I was going home. It didn't matter to me that I'd lived in Indianapolis for more than a third of my life, or that for the first eighteen years I'd lived in Evansville. Suddenly, with no more warning than an aneurysm, I realized that a suburb of Dayton, Ohio was home.

And it wasn't because of the house, or the cats, or the weather, or anything else that might've tied me there. It was HER.

I was going home from a blizzard-ridden business trip, because she was there.

She's my home. And it doesn't seem to matter what the street signs say.

So to quote Mr. Joel: "Home can be the Pennsylvania Turnpike or Indiana's early morning dew. Home can be the hills of California; home is just another word for you."