Where the Heart Is

I met a good friend for lunch today.  It had been a while since we’d seen each other, so we were catching up, talking about the holidays, what we’d done, where we’d been.  As we talked, I was reminded of a moment during the holiday that stood out to me as it was happening.  I don’t remember what was happening in detail, only that I was talking to members of my family—I couldn’t even exactly say who.  But I remember someone talking to me, asking me what I would be doing the following day, and I answered, rather absently, “Going home.”

My own wording made me pause.  At the time, I was at Carrigafoyle, the brown house on the mountain, the house in which I’d grown up, where all of my family was gathered for the holiday.  Wasn’t I already home?  The answer is yes, I was.  But now here I am, alone in my foxhole apartment where I’ve been living for less than five months, and I am just as much at home as I was there.

“Home” has been a strange concept to me for some time.  I’ve learned of myself that I don’t like to be on the move.  Living out of a suitcase, always aware that in a few days or weeks or months I will be leaving again—this is repugnant to me.  I want to be settled, to spread out my things in a place and stay there for an indefinite period of time, or, if it is defined, at least a good long period of time.  Nevertheless, I never could bring myself to call my university “home.”  Even though I didn’t really live in that brown house with all the dogs and cats and people anymore, it was more permanent in my mind than Hollins was, and so it remained my home.

Now, I’m not talking about the careless “I’m going home” at the end of the day’s work, as in “I’m getting out of here”.  Everyone has said that, but it doesn’t mean that the place to which you go is home.  For me, the various dorm rooms at Hollins, the various cabins at my summer camp jobs, and the room on the third floor of my London homestay all held a certain amount of affection for me, but they weren’t home.  Deep in the back of my mind I always knew I’d have to move on and someone else would take my place.

This apartment is different.  Perhaps it’s because I don’t know when I’ll be moving on, but even knowing that I will someday doesn’t bother me.  I come here and I sink into my red chair or settle down at my desk and I know that I am home.  This place is mine—this life is mine.  And so, though I will always love Carrigafoyle, though I’m sure I will return many a time in the years to come, it’s no longer home, or not the only home in my heart.  Here in the Foxhole, I’m deeply content, and I freely use the word “home” to describe it.