HOME

What IS "home"? What does it mean? To you? To others? To me? It was good to get back "home" from Denver and our visit with kids and grands (which by the way ARE). However, coming home, I began to question just exactly what it is, this place we call "home". Is it a structure? A feeling? Is your "home" built around memories?  Is it truly where your heart is? Or is it just another word we so easily throw around and don't really understand or comprehend? In the last 6 months, I have lived in 3 separate structures. Were they "home" to me or just a place to sleep and cry and mull over life? Were they places to put my clothes, or to bear my heart? Is it where my dogs were? Where I played my music? Where friends and family came to see me? The place I came home to after work or sat in while I made decisions that would affect the rest of my life and the rest of my family? Here are some online definitions I looked up:

*one's place of residence

*the social unit formed by a family living together

*familiar or usual setting, congenial environment

*a place of origin

*a place where something began and flourished

*an environment offering affection and security

Looking further at the idiom "Home is where the heart is", I found this:

"You use this proverb to say that you are with the person or at the place you love the most".

Is it a place you run to, or run from? Can you have more than one home, or feel "at home" in more than one place?  Is home just a feeling of acceptance and comfort ability? Is it a place where you can be fully yourself and if so ARE you fully yourself there? I found a definition from a soldier that said "home is where you hang your helmet. Home is where you send your soul for safekeeping." Maya Angelou says "The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned." If that is true, then home is IN us... and in those others that we invite INside of us. So many "homes" are broken, dysfunctional, hectic, non-caring, non-secure, hellish places to reside....to hang your hat, to keep your heart! If the heart is indicative of the inner being, then inside your own self is where "home" truly is! Home is not a location but a commitment to the ones I love. And I DO. So. Being the proud owner of 2 houses, and being a vagabond for the past 6 months, not knowing WHERE my home will eventually BE, I am still able to say to myself and those I love, welcome "home".

p.s. I had a GREAT time with my family...I felt at "home" in each house...thank you all for the acceptance you provide to us, the love that you give, the people that you are and are comfotable being around us....I hope we will always be a "home" to you....

p.s.s. check out some germany pics in my flicker!