Going Home

My son said to me, not long ago, “Mom, you know what I’ve realized? I’ve realized that ‘home’ is wherever you are.” I loved him so much in that moment. He would know better than anyone. Home was a very important place to him in the five years that he traveled the world with the Air Force. Home was utmost on his mind as he patrolled the streets of Baghdad for a year. Home was his reward. The place he got to go back to after answering his call to duty.

I had been carrying some guilt about that. See, while he was overseas, I got divorced and traded the four bedroom house I had raised my children in for a two bedroom apartment. Things were not the same when he came back. I worried a lot about how this would affect him. His realization that home had nothing to do with the four walls we lived in was a great relief and comfort to me after many months of divorce and turmoil. Then again, as most people of my age know, things are never the same again when you go home, no matter where you’ve been or how old you are.

My call to duty, my most honorable mission in life, was to raise him and all his siblings. Home was where I did that. For many years I lovingly tended gardens and painted bedrooms bright cheerful colors. I cooked large meals in a spacious kitchen for a growing family. I worried about the leaking roof and the price of oil in the winter. I sacrificed, I gave, realizing of course, but not truly accepting, that our home had nothing to do with the building but with the love that we shared there as a family. Admittedly, I worried about what other people thought of our house and our life. I wanted my children to be proud of the place they brought their friends home to. I also wanted it to be a warm and comfortable place to entertain my friends, and it was. Ultimately, that’s what a house should be, the place you feel comfortable in with the people you feel comfortable with.

My children are all grown now and we are all at different stages in our lives. They are making homes of their own. I went home recently, to the Southern New England town I was raised in. I’ve always thought it was funny that when I drive south on the interstate to go there I say “I’m going home” and when I drive north on the same road to come back I also say “I’m going home.” The town is not the same. It never was the same, whenever I went back. Strangers live in the house I grew up in. All the people I love live in different places. Some of the people I love aren’t there anymore. It is still home, however, not because of the geographical location but because of the memories of the love I had there and because of the people I love who are still there.

My home now is the place I have made this stage of my life in. It’s the city I’ve raised my children in with the people who love us. I no longer worry about what other people who come here may think of the tiny apartment that replaced my manicured house. It is the place I feel comfortable in. It’s the place where I found peace in a time of great pain. It’s the giant windows that bring in sunlight and look down on the city lights at night. It’s the bookcases in every room that hold my favorite possessions; my books and my family photos. It is the tiny kitchen that I cook meals for one or two in. It is the friends who have continued to walk this journey with me, even when the road was hardest. It is the adult children who come back to visit me and remind me that my greatest contribution to the world had nothing to do with maintaining a beautiful building. It has everything to do with successfully launching kind, giving, loving human beings into the world.

Home is the smell of the ocean beaches of my childhood. Home is the sound of the rain on the roof in the city I live in now. Home is the sound of the fog horn off the coast. Home is the noise and lights of this city on a late summer night. Home is the photographs and paintings on my walls of all the memories of the places and people of our family. Home is the old oak chair that I rocked each of my babies in. Home is this strong, hot cup of coffee in my favorite mug, this good book, on this big, worn, comfy chair. Home is the soft cool breeze coming in the window. Home is the person I care about sitting next to me, even if we aren’t talking at all, just being there. Home is this very moment, right now.

This piece was originally published on the Bangor Daily News website, August 13, 2011.