I had a conversation recently about home. How for my whole life “home” had been my parents house in New Bern, NC.
They however would talk about “going back home” which was Nassau County, New York. When I was a kid we’d visit my grandparents there and that gave me a sense of home for that area too.
Just the other night though, after we had put the kids to bed following an impromptu family dinner with Tanya’s parents, I sat in my brown recliner looking at the curtains in our dining room window and a switch flipped.
THIS is home now. This house, those windows, that chair, that view from the chair. Home.
I’ve felt untethered since the morning after my mom passed away, my world forever shifted. My dad sold our family home a couple years later and I haven’t been back to my home town since he died in 2018.
And there I sat. For the first time in a long time, I felt truly grounded in my home. Life and death, laughter, arguments, and celebrations have happened in these walls. More than that though I’ve built my life here and in the streets places around me. I build things here now. I am finally home.