When you work overnight, conversations with your co-workers cover alot of ground. After talking about growing up in Alaska, living in London and MN, then moving down to Perth, one of the nurses asked, "so, where do you consider home?"
Now, I'm sure that she did not intend that to be a philosophical question, but just something polite to keep the conversation going. Something along the lines of, "and how's the family?" To be fair, i didn't wax philosophical until a couple of hours later (3am is a good time for retrospection), but then I gave the question some serious thought.
See, I had just come from a trip back "home." That trip included California and Minnesota, both of which could arguably claim the title, but in this case "home" was just a handy and concise way of explaining that it wasn't a vacation, but rather a visit. You vacation in Fiji or the Christmas Islands, but you visit back home, and you rarely get a great tan visiting.
It was a really good visit, though. At the California "home," we got to visit grandparents, in-laws, sister, cousins, neice, and father (in no particular order), catch up on the gossip, eat at IHOP, and clean up some of the generations of accumulated treasures behind grandpa's house. At the Minnesota "home," I got to keep grandma company after her surgery, hang out with mom, stay with some friends in rochester, catch up with church folks, and hear the rochester concert band in the park. I even drove past the "home" that we recently, and with much rejoicing, unloaded in this soft market (only to see a boat parked in the driveway -- I knew he could have paid more!).
Then there are the homes that I didn't make it to on this trip. I didn't get up to the ranch in Mendocino county, I didn't make it to Alaska, I didn't get to visit with friends in Washington, a "home" where i've never lived, but claim it as something familiar and loved. It seems that I would claim every place west of the Mississippi as home, and some parts of London as well. But when I was on the plane out of San Francisco, at the start of the long flight to Sydney and then to Perth, my neighbor in the row asked where I was headed. "Going home," I replied without thinking, "Perth."
I guess that home is many places, many people, and a wealth of experiences shared with folks that you love. So come and visit us...wherever we happen to be.
Make yourselves at home.
2 comments:
An interesting question to ponder and one I have considered myself as well. I have the advantage of still having most of my family in the town where I "grew up" though, so I still call Toledo home. We'll see how long it takes before Pgh gains the title.
I ask myself this question often, and I know you kids do. But I think we've been lucky to have had so many places to call home - any time we want.
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