Home

Home.  A simple word. With so many meanings and associations and emotions.

I'm rethinking what that one word means to me now.

home-Greensboro NC- I reside in a place we call home.  I go home after teaching a group of children every day.  We returned home from our Christmas trip to the place we live.  I do love this home we are buying; we had to wait a long time to get it, and I am so thankful for it.  We live here now; have lived in this area for over six years now- longer than we've ever lived in one place before. 

home- Illinois-side of St. Louis metro area- The places where I was born and did most of my growing up.  A sense of "roots" if you will. Many of my extended family are still in that area.  It is the place where my husband was born & grew up, where we met, fell in love and married, where we graduated from, where we struggled those first years of marriage, where we put ourselves through college, where our children were born, and many family memories are there. 

"home"- Quad Cities, IL/IA- What we often refer to as our "home" or "back home" is 900 miles or so away from where we currently live.  It is where my parents and sister/brother-in-law/niece live.  It is where we moved from to move here.  It has a lot of sentiment attached to it- long, green, tall fields of corn; lots of snow and cold; storms (real weather); farm fields where you can see for a long way out and watch storms come in or the combines harvesting the crops; the Mississippi (which I have almost always lived near); many memories of our children growing up, Christmases together, school and sports events; work friends; children we've taught...

The problem Rob and I seem to face is that we find we don't "belong" to any of those homes it seems.  We visited some of them over our Christmas break, and it felt strange to us.  We know these places, we have many memories and recognized the physical places we were in.  But we felt like an outsider looking in.  We grew up and lived in these places but they changed/we changed and we don't quite fit in anymore.  Yet we don't belong to this new "home" we live in either.  We are outsiders here in NC- strange creatures who know what tornadoes look like, know what "real" storms, cold, and snow is.  We don't think the weather here is brutal or horribly cold.  We don't care much for super sweet tea.  We don't talk quite like people here (though I see that starting to change and kind of hate it).  My family notices changes in me and though it's silly I know, I cried over that while we were home. 

I guess all this means is that I will have to look to HOME - the only one that really matters anyway.  This earth is only a place to travel and live for a handful of hopefully double digit years before moving on to the eternal home.  And feeling like out outsider gets old some days.  Feeling alone and disconnected leaves me homesick for HOME.  So I'll try to cherish the good memories of my old homes, learn to make a home here for my children to cherish, and look for the day when I can go HOME to a place that will not leave me feeling homesick or left behind or disappointed.  And until that day comes I will enjoy every day I get to come home to this abode and be with the ones I love and every chance I get to go "home" and see my dear parents, sister, brother, and niece.