Home

November 27, 2006

I just got in late last night from my longest stay ever in Reno. I have probably been there about 8 or 9 times now, and every single time I go, I feel like, this could be home.

It could be home for a lot of reasons. It could be home, because my dad is there. It's where he moved a little over three years ago. And C's there. He's been there even before my dad. When I think of home, I think of a lot of East Coast things, naturally; it's my familiar. But lately, I have thought of home as so many parts of the West Coast too.

It could be home because the area there is so me. It's so beautiful and I could totally picture myself moving there, finding a small one bedroom, I'd already have some people I know, so that would be a good thing, and I'd have the mountains, and Lake Tahoe. I'd have family and some friends already. I'd have no humidity and I'd have warm days on a hammock.

For a couple months at the end of my last year in grad school, I seriously considered moving out there. I'd go to see my dad, and I'd pick up apartment listings books outside grocery stores. I'd be even more observant, taking in the areas we'd drive through, look at "for rent" signs even more intently. I'd check the newspapers, google apartments when I'd get back home. I looked at the jobs out there, I found jobs I could apply for. I pictured my life there, my moving there. And so much of it was so appealing. So much of it still is.

As many aspects of it that I love and that I could picture would be so home to me, a whole huge chunk of it is just too unfamiliar to my familiar, lifelong home.

My mom is home. My home was with her for my childhood, and she's always going to be my home, even now, as an adult. We have an amazing relationship for which I am so grateful. I honestly couldn't picture being that far from her. My grandparents are home to me. All four of them, who I am so fortunate to still have in my life. I've even lived part of my childhood with my mom's parents. My home was with them. My best friends are home to me. I've lived with them too, they were my home for more than just a year, and they are still my home. They are my go to people if I need to talk it out in the middle of the night; they're the siblings I never had.

Home has always been the East Coast to me. The New England cold weather, the seasons, especially the fall, the Sox, Bruins, and Pats. York Beach, Hampton Beach, the town I grew up in. The Nor'easters, the 90 degree humid weather, they are all so very much home to me. It may not all be stuff that's amazing and desirable to others, but it's still what I know, what I'm used to, what makes up "home" if someone were to ask me to describe it.

All of these people and things have made up my home for the past almost 24 and a half years. The thought of being far away from all of that, it's freaky. It scares me and it gives me the feeling. But it excites me too. And for those few months after grad school, I was legitamately getting ready to be serious about this move. But for all these reasons of a familiar home and all things associated with it, I couldn't do it. I am still here, home with the familiar- the faces, the memories, the people. I'm home with all of that.

They say "home is where the heart is." But what if you're heart is grounded, if it is home, in two places? And the thought of leaving one place for another is really that intriguing, yet at the same time that unthinkable? I am certainly one for trying new things, and being adventurous and although sometimes have a fear of change, I'm one to embrace it. Growth comes with change. I like being comfortable, but I also like the uncertainty that comes with new, with unfamiliar, with change.

But changing my home? To that far away? Not right now. Not yet. I guess I will just know when, or if, the time is ever going to be right for that. Or if some miracle happens, and Reno switches coasts, becomes New Hampshire, or Vermont, or Maine- then I'm so there, in a heartbeat.

Until then, I will spend my vacations embracing every moment I spend there. Taking it all in, living in the moment with it all. There's not many places that you can visit and really feel like you're home. I do there. And that's a good feeling.