Home is where the heart is.

From Victoria:

Love the blog. This is a first for me.

I've been ruminating on what is "home" to me. The word creates images that go out around in me in concentric circles. Fasten your seatbelts. I'm overcaffeinated this morning. And my homelife has recently exploded in petty drama. So I will retreat into the intellectual candy of self-expression.

My little housewife mind first darts to a vision of "Casa del Humphrey" here in Jupiter - a hip-roofed ranch house with palm trees where I have professionally nested and nurtured my brood (with varying degrees of success) for the last 9 years. It's the current and comfortable container of all of our stuff and experiences, still warm with every day life because at least half of us still live here. Right now for me "home" is this living thing still in process; a collection of familiar junk and activities that we have more or less mastered, but not finished with (I know. I know. Never end a sentence with a preposition).

The next circle out is South Florida, which has ostensibly been my home for 27 years...yipes! But, like Lisa, in my heart I consider myself something other than where I live; something other than a "Floridian" (or, for those that missed it, "Flor-idiot"). I am, yes, fluent in South Florida culture and geography. Every single relative who I hold dear lives here. I have taught myself to exploit those things here that I enjoy (beach walks, kayaking, waterside restaurants playing Calypso tunes). But though I have lived here exactly half of my entire life, my being grates against what I perceive as a subtropical sprawl that I will never truly embrace. I love my in-laws, who have welcomed and sustained me through mucho crappo over the years. And I love my local friends ferociously. But even so, I have bluffed to my sons, usually after some domestic mexican standoff, by saying, "If anything ever happened to your father I would so be out of here!". I cannot find complete comfort here... can't make peace with the pace and the population density. The air is too thick, too hot. And I resent the fact that civilization repeats itself every half mile up I-95 from Miami to Jacksonville with an intense, cheek-by-jowl arrangement of Taco Bells, bigbox stores, gas stations and look-alike stucco homes - all glued together by one apparently seamless base of concrete. It is indeed home. But it's also not home.

However, whatever might be the ideal "home" outside of Florida defies definition for me. I have lived so many places before here. In fantasy it would be a place without any of the negatives above. But I haven't found that Shangri-La of temperate perfection yet.

The next home-ish circle out from me is wherever I feel seen, connected and safe. That would include all the familiar roads already traveled; the old friends (like some dear and affirming Smith women) and places lived. It is also found within the familiarity of the various languages I have learned to speak. I speak "church" (I am absolutely fluent in both Catholic and Protestant by now). I speak "family" ("Oh, and you have raised how many kids?"...that's like parlez-vous-Francais? to an expectant mother or a granny). Having had lousy social skills when I was younger I now endeavor to make conversational homes with people wherever I go. When we were in Seattle (Lisa, Mimi and Cindy, you so missed a great time) I was so struck and impressed anew by Allison's gift for engaging anybody and everybody she meets. She does what I would like to do....but she does it like she's on crack.

Allison has this rare and adept gift of making a home, or connection, with everybody she meets. She approaches some guy selling paintings at Pike Place Market. She asks a question or two; makes a appreciative comment. And, like the lighting-quick learner that she is, she immediately demonstrates some understanding and value of that soul...."Hey, girls, this is Tony, he's from San Francisco, like me. Looks at this painting..."...And in the process she makes older-than-Allison Tony feel like he's not just a good painter, or a fellow San Franciscan, but some sort of watercolor "stud" in front of her four appreciative friends. It's easy to feel at home with somebody who treats you like that. And then Tony will share back, and connect, and then Allison made a sort of home with him.

Oh yeah, I've ranged too far. But I had fun making the term walk on all fours.

I guess home is where the heart is.