Where My Heart Is

It’s Gratituesday!  I’m feeling grateful that I have a roof over my head, particularly with the looming remnants of yet another hurricane threatening a second deluge in the desert.

Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz whispered, “There’s no place like home.” And Pliny the Elder said, “Home is where the heart is.” If you combine those two ideas you could say, “There’s no place like where your heart is.”

It’s a tiny quilt. eight inches by sixteen inches or so.

I made this miniature wall quilt a while ago. I like to think that it symbolizes all my different homes.

No, I don’t own multiple homes. Let me explain.

The Home I Grew Up In

At seven years old our family moved from a two bedroom house into a much bigger home. I consider both of them as my childhood homes where so many memories happened. About a decade ago Dad and Mom built a house in the town Dad grew up in. I found out it isn’t the place, but the people who make it home.

“I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and the dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.” ~Maya Angelou

The “After I Left Home” Home

I had three or four different spots I called home after leaving my childhood home. Those all felt temporary, and I never really made those places homelike. Dorms and student apartments don’t have many homey touches, yet each still served as home. I hung my “hat” there, I slept there. Nearly everything I owned in the world fit into that tiny space. When they tore down one of those buildings years later I felt a twinge of melancholy, but nothing devastating.

“Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there any more.” ~Robin Hobb

The “I’ve Lost Count of All the Moves We’ve Made” Homes

Is there an ideal home?

I’ve had more than a few addresses since marrying MSH. I’ve known some people who can’t wait to unpack after a move, feeling unsettled until they’re surrounded by their “stuff.” I always hesitated to unpack it all, wishing instead for a fresh start, for less stuff surrounding me, requiring attention, needing dusting, cleaning and maintenance.

We’ve lived in tiny and big places, in between places, hot and cold places, weird places, new and old places, remodeled and mobile places. We’ve also had a couple of spells where we didn’t have an address, semi-homeless, staying with a variety of relatives while the dust settled and life sorted itself out.

I do wonder what it’d be like to stay in one place for twenty or thirty years. Would I get restless? Would I wish for a change? Would I feel content or would I find a need to remodel every so often? Or would I be completely and totally delighted and settled?

“Home wasn’t a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.” ~Sarah Dessen

The Home I Carry With Me

I suppose that’s why my favorite home is the one I carry with me. I sometimes think of my body as the real home and the me inside it as its resident. I’m the one whose brain and heart feel twenty-ish years old, while the me everyone sees, this outer shell that looks and moves like someone much, much older, is just a house. I’m the turtle and this body is my shell.

Does that sound silly? Maybe it is. But it works for me. This home could probably use a new paint job, a bit of foundation work, and my plumbing isn’t always up to code. It definitely has some creaks and odd nuances. But it’s the house I’ve been blessed with and most of the time it doesn’t leak. So I think I’ll stick around in it and see what happens over the next few decades. The me that lives inside of it will always feel young and snarky.  At least, I hope so.

“Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You’ll find what you need to furnish it – memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.” ~ Tad Williams

The Nicest Word

The word Home feels warm and comfy, welcoming and wonderful. I feel lucky, blessed really, to have lived in so many places and enjoyed multiple sorts of lives in and around them. I’m a lucky woman. After all, “there’s no place like home.”

The Oz series of books talk of silver not ruby slippers, (which happen to show up better on film.)