There's No Place Like..?

At times like this that I wonder, "What exactly is home?" Of course, home is often a place you grow up or where your family lives. But at a time when 5,000 some people are trying to get "home" amidst rough weather and agonizing flight cancellations, it becomes even more important to get to your destination. But what about the journey? It wouldn't be the end of the world to wait. (ha!) To have patience for the world to come to you at it's leisure. But I'm writing this from Iowa, where the slow pace has entered my system and I'm cool with it. My flight has been cancelled four times, but hey!.. I'm shockingly mellowed out.

Home has become more like a concept, rather than a physical structure. It's the people I miss when I'm away that are like my home. There was a place we called "2736" in Minneapolis that I still call home-- it's physical structure falling apart in so many ways, but the memories it held will exist for as long as Katie, Erica and I keep telling the stories. It was epic because of the 6 years of ups and downs that one goes through in their twenties. If I could yell at my 25 year old self I would say, "Girl, you have got so much to learn...!" But the thing that really made this place a home was all of the people that were a part of it.

In New York, it was a place on 73rd and Central Park West that became home in a non-traditional sense. I became caretaker to my boss, a former psychiatrist struggling with Alzheimer's and the death of her husband. That "home" taught me the importance of -- everything, really. Gratitude was on the top of that list.

New York has its share of housing battles. High rent, small spaces, pests, crazy landlords, "fake" walls... all of the usual complaints. My favorite stories to tell now go back to a time when we lived in an Astoria apartment with pink carpet and a kitchen floor that bubbled up from a broken water pipe, among other interesting character traits. Katie would tell this story best, but conversations from the family living below us were a huge topic of conversation. The wife would yell at her husband, "You should have left me in India to die!" Talk about missing home.

The great thing about going home is the appreciation you feel from the people that are so excited to see you. You could be sick or cranky, but people that haven't seen you in awhile don't seem to mind (or they just think it is your new personality and accept it). I love the perspective these trips give me and recognize that all of these places I call home fit are part of a larger picture that is not quite complete -yet. It's a constant circle-- a Mandala. Going and coming-- buses to planes to cars to trains and then back around the circle again. That is, if you are lucky enough to get a flight.