What I realized this week is that “home” is a collection of all of those places. And it has little to do with the roof over your head or an address on a map.
As Webster states, “home” is a “place of residence”… we have a collection of over 10 homes, not including where we each grew up. It is also a “social unit formed by a family living together”… we have family in more places we can count, because in addition to our traditional family, we have a large military family with whom we have certainly formed a social unit over the years. Lastly, it’s “a familiar or usual setting”… we have a wealth of memories and experiences that have now become so familiar and usual, that they create in us the feeling of “home.”
Perhaps Webster is on to something after all.
I am certain than in two years, when the movers come to pack up all of our belongings, we will be sad to leave Arizona because our military family will have become larger, and there will be things that by then are familiar and usual to us. We do not yet know where our next place of residence will be, but it really doesn’t matter.
Because what I figured out this vacation was that no matter how you define it, if you are lucky, “home” is simply too big to fit in any box.. And if you are really lucky… it does fit nicely, right inside your heart.
