"Home is where the heart is" is one of my favorite sayings. I like it because it encompasses the reality that people do not necessarily need a specific place or material things to feel at home, just people they love and who love them. The idea of home is a little more complicated, though. It seems to indeed require some sort of physical space to go "back" to, some sort of line between "home" and "not home," yet it also seems flexible, able to be where you make it. Most people would answer the place where they have lived for most of their life or the place where they were born when asked where home is. I usually answer both: "Well, I'm from Binghamton, New York, but I'm originally from Cuba."

Although I've lived in Binghamton for more than half of my life, I still consider Cuba my home. But should I? The home I think of when I think of home really only exists as the memories of a six-year-old. Life as I remember it does not exist. I am no longer a little girl and my family no longer lives together in the house I remember. In fact, it no longer is the house I remember. After we left, my uncle and his wife moved into the upstairs where I used to live and made it their own, and now that they have emigrated, too, I do not know what it looks like. I have not been back in five years. And every time I return, it seems that the memory of my time there, like the walls of the house, gets more cracked and faded. Every time I go back I see more and more misery. It is hard to tell whether it is because of the veil of innocence being drawn away from my eyes or because life is getting worse there. It is probably a combination of both. Either way, it is not the home of my childhood. And yet, I still find myself drawn to it. Maybe the saying is true and it is because much of my family is still stuck there. Maybe it is because my first and happiest memories reside there. Maybe it is the ever-shining sun and the verdant nature, the wistful sea.

And yet, although it is a city that has never been my home, I have also been inexplicably drawn to Boston since I first visited it in seventh grade. After that visit, my twelve-year-old self decided I was going to make a life there. I do not know what caused the magical spell that the city cast over me. I only remember that it was raining and that I dropped my camera on the cobblestones after coming out of a year-long Christmas store hurrying to meet my group to go to the aquarium. I did not go back for years, but I frequently thought of that historical city, and when my girlfriend went to college there, I had the perfect excuse to be reunited with it. Going back felt like home and I loved every new part of the city that I saw. The Italian district, the farmer's market, Harvard Square, the port. Again I ended at the sea. Maybe that is what is what draws me to Boston. The sea that calls me and reminds me of home — the home where I grew up with my entire family, the home I wish still existed. Home is where the heart is. Although the image in my mind does not exist, the "home" of a loving family will always be real.