“Home is not a place, it’s a feeling.“

–Cecilia Ahern (b. 1981; Irish novelist known for her works such as P.S. I Love You [2004] And Where Rainbows End.

I have been thinking a lot about home lately. Mind you: it’s not as if thinking about home is a new thing for me. It’s not. I’ve always thought about home a lot.

Sometimes, when I’m thinking about home, a passage from Robert Frost’s dramatic dialogue “The Death of the Hired Man” floats across my memory’s landscape. Silas has returned to the farm, hoping for another chance. Mary and her husband Warren are talking about his situation and theirs:

‘Warren,’ she said, ‘he has come home to die:
You needn’t be afraid he’ll leave you this time.’

‘Home,’ he mocked gently.

‘Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he’s nothing to us, any more
Than was the hound that came a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.’

‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’

‘I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.’

Can you relate? Probably. All of us, at one time or another, have grappled with our own conflicting thoughts about home. Is home the place where, regardless of where we’ve been and what we’ve done, they are bound to take us in simply because we’re family? Or is home the place where even undeserving prodigal sons and daughters find warm welcome?

Sometimes, another poem oozes itself into the nooks and crannies of my mind. It’s “aunt jemima” by Lucille Clifton, one of my favorite poets. The poem speaks to all of us who are marginalized because of race or ethnicity, sexual identity or orientation, gender, disabilities, religious beliefs, socioeconomic status, or age. What makes “aunt jemima” especially poignant is the simple fact that Clifton, like the woman whose voice tells the poem’s story, is Black as well.

white folks say i remind them
of home i who have been homeless
all my life except for their
kitchen cabinets.

i who have made the best
of everything
pancakes batter for chicken
my life

the shelf on which i sit
between the flour and cornmeal
is thick with dreams
oh how i long for

my own syrup
rich as blood
my true nephews my nieces
my kitchen my family
my home

At other times, home brushes against me in broader and more thought-provoking strokes as I think about the 15 million people worldwide who do not have a home, with more than 500,000 of them right here in the United States of America, the wealthiest nation in the world. I think about it the way that Anna Quindlen wrote about it in her 1987 Newsweek essay, “Homeless.” Quindlen nailed it dead on by emphasizing that when we talk about the homeless in abstract terms, we remove the personal, human element from the conversation. Then it’s easy to turn away from the problem. It’s harder to turn away from a pained face staring, eyes begging for the surcease of need. With a touch bordering on genius, Quindlen shatters the abstraction of homeless by pressing it smackdab against our faces as a real woman with a given first name:

Her name was Ann, and we met in the Port Authority Bus Terminal several Januaries ago. I was doing a story on homeless people. She said I was wasting my time talking to her; she was just passing through, although she’d been passing through for more than two weeks. To prove to me that this was true, she rummaged through a tote bag and a manila envelope and finally unfolded a sheet of typing paper and brought out her photographs.

Quindlen ends her essay with a power punch:

Sometimes I think we would be better off if we forgot about the broad strokes and concentrated on the details. Here is a woman without a bureau. There is a man with no mirror, no wall to hang it on. They are not the homeless. They are people who have no homes. No drawer that holds the spoons. No window to look out upon the world. My God. That is everything.

Fortunately, I’ve been blessed. I’ve always had a window to look out upon the world. I’ve always had a drawer to hold the spoons. I’ve always had a home.

Sometimes, those homes get all comfy and cozy in my mind, especially my homes in West Virginia where I was born and grew up, and even more especially when John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Road” twangs its melody across the stretched wires of my memory:

Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain mamma
Take me home, country roads

At other times, when I get to thinking about home, I drift back to Alderson Broaddus University and watch as I transformed dormitories into my home for four years.

Or maybe I start thinking about the apartments or the houses that became home because I was the one who signed the leases and paid the rents.

Sometimes, when I think about home, I think about the first house that I bought, the house that I owned for years until I sold it and moved into the next house that I bought and live in now.  Both homes, my slices of the American Dream.

Sometimes, in thinking about home, I even think about hotels and vacation rentals, here in the States and abroad, sometimes for no more than a night. Still, they felt like home.

As I think about all of my various homes–and I’ve had many–I realize that I’ve always felt right at home, as much in one as in another. I don’t miss one home any more than I miss another.

I have always been keenly aware that I feel at home regardless of where I am. Coal camp. College dorm. Capitol Hill. Shenandoah Valley. Hampton Inn. Waldorf Astoria. United States of America. Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Repubblica Italiana. Renter. Owner. Vacationer. Overnighter. Passing through. Here for a little while. Maybe a little longer. Maybe forever. 

It’s not that I lack nostalgia; I don’t. It’s not that some of these homes haven’t outshined others; they certainly have. It’s not that I see myself as a global citizen, comfortable here, there, and everywhere. I don’t. I’m far too rooted in my roots to see myself through that lens.

It’s simply that as I reflect on the homes that I’ve known–and that’s exactly what I’m doing now, one week to the day shy of my 76th birthday–I realize that all of those homes became home because I accepted them as they were and where they were, and I rolled up my sleeves fiercely determined to make them my home. My home. Unpack. Organize. Fill the dresser drawers. Grace the place with fresh flowers. Play cherished music. Tend to indoor plants. Nurture tomatoes on the patio. Cook and bake and share with neighbors or even strangers. Get to know the neighborhood. Discover the local markets. Establish routines. Join. Get involved. Volunteer. Make a difference. Begin new rituals. Begin anew.

I suppose my current mountaintop oasis will remain my home. But if the time should come that I decide to move to D.C. or Brattleboro (VT) or Asheville (NC) or Savannah (GA), I have no doubt in the world that I will feel at home in those places, too.

Looking back, of course, requires looking ahead to the inevitable time when my spirit will give up its earthly home. I am keenly aware of that inevitability when I listen to Gospel songs like the Cathedrals’ “Going Home”:

Now the twilight is fading, the day soon shall end
Lord, I get homesick, the farther I roam
But the Father has led me each step of the way
And now I’m going home

Or, maybe I become more aware of what lies ahead as the Sensational Nightingales sing “Somewhere to Lay My Head”:

Oh, when this life (somewhere to lay my head)
Is all over (somewhere to lay my head)
Lord, and my work (somewhere to lay my head)
On earth is done (somewhere to lay my head)
Oh Lord, I want somewhere (somewhere to lay my head)
To lay my head (somewhere to lay my head)
Oh Lord, I want somewhere (somewhere to lay my head)
To lay my head (somewhere to lay my head)

I have no idea when I will be called into the Light, and my forever journey will begin. Of this much, though, I am certain. When I leave my body here, a new home will await me there. I have no idea what my new home will be like. But I believe that there will be a nail just inside the afterlife’s doorway, waiting for me to hang my hat. I’ll settle in, find comfort, and embrace the soulful realization that I’m surrounded by the serenity of a place called home.