Home

I know I often confuse my friends when I talk about going home. Everyone seems to gives me a different label about where I am from Minnesota, France, Philadelphia, DC, and now Atlanta. Those are the places that I am associated with and depending on the circumstances those are certainly places that I consider or have considered to be home. I think what might be hard to understand for some people is the idea that I might have many places that I consider to be home.

I didn’t really understand until after my parents moved from my hometown to the East Cost when I was in college what the phrase “Home is where the heart is” truly meant for me. Home is no longer just those four walls that contained my childhood memories it is the place were my family gathers, it is those places I have lived and started to build my own life in, and it is those places that give me the familiar comfort of knowing that I belong there in some way.

Home for me is always going to be Minnesota. The lakes, the forests, the Mississippi, the Mayo Clinic, and St. Kate’s are all familiar to me and are all an important part of who I am. So Minnesota is undoubtedly home though I no longer have a reserved place in a house there but rather many wonderful invitations to stay at friends and family homes all over the state. If someone asks me where I am from I will likely respond Minnesota since that is where I spent the majority of my first 22 years of life.

My parent’s home in Philadelphia is the place that I have spent the least about of physical time in my life but those walls contain the familiarity of my childhood and the ease of knowing that I belong there. The last 6 years since the move from Minnesota I have maybe spent a grand total of 4 months at the house and each time I come back for a month or a week or just a weekend I have to relearn which light switch is for what, where this pan is stored, and realizing there are new things in the house that I haven’t seen before. Those things come back pretty fast though and it is fun to discover things that are new for our home but that are familiar in the sense that I know my mother’s still and see how those things belong in the house as well. It is the feeling that I have in this house that makes it home. I walk down the street or I go to the store and it still feels odd but when I am inside the house I know I belong.

Then there is France. Dhumeray, which is the name of my grandparent’s farm, is as familiar to me as my home in Minnesota was. I spent most of my summer vacations at the farm while I was growing-up. It is certainly a place where my heart is, the long house with the different colored rooms. One day I tried to count how many people could sleep on a bed in the house, at least 20. That place has so many memories too the attic alcoves where I slept most summers are still there, the hilarious Christmas break evenings of a few years ago when 13 of us cousins were sleeping in the great room, the weddings of aunts and uncles, and the 50^th wedding anniversary of my grandparents. Not to mention the adventures we had swimming the pond, the raft we build with my grandfather, the bike rides through the countryside, the rides on the tractor through the fields, and my eternal search for a quiet place to sit so I could just think away from everyone. One of the drawbacks to having a huge family is that finding time alone is not always easy but at the same time I would never give up the amazing child I had running around with my band of cousins or the link that I now have to that place.

Paris is my home too. I know my way around; I have favorite cafés and streets, and most importantly a favorite bridge (this I have been told is a true sign of a Parisian). Paris for me is magical and every time I am there I discover something new, something I hadn’t seen before. I will be in Paris next week, so I imagine I will write a whole post or even several about the city so I will not dwell to long on it now.

DC where I lived for three years is home in a different way too. I also know my way around, I have favorite places to go, and many memories all over town. I feel comfortable there in away that I don’t feel in any other city that I have ever lived in.

Now there is Atlanta, it still doesn’t quiet feel like home. I am starting to feel more comfortable there and more at ease with finding my way around. I imagine by the end of next just in time for my to graduate in maybe leave I will be starting to feel like Atlanta too is home for me. In the mean time it is the place where my possessions are and so am I when I am not “going home” or traveling around the world.