I have been blessed, truly blessed, in this life to never have felt like I was lacking a home. My parents have always provided me with a warm bed and a house that was, as the plaque on my mom’s wall proudly proclaims, “Clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy.” I know that these blessings are ones I often take for granted, and are not shared by everyone, and for that I am truly grateful. But I never realized how much going away to college would affect the way that I perceived home.
If you asked my friends, they would all agree that I am all-too-fond of clichés. (I’m sure a few of them are rolling their eyes at the thought of what would naturally follow that statement.) One cliché I always took at face value was the often-overused statement, “Home is where the heart is.” That made sense to me. My heart resided with my family and friends in the Bay Area, sometimes traveling up to the mountains on the east or down the coast to the beautiful water to the west. But family and friends held my heart, and were all nicely tucked away with me on the West Coast (obviously the best coast).
Moving halfway across the country for college, I was worried for a lot of things, and expectant of many more. What I did not realize, however, was how drastically my perception of home would have to change. Suddenly, I was not in the Golden State with my family and long-time friends. But as friendship began to build up around me, as love began to grow from within me, as ties and connections extended around me and drew me into the beautiful world of college, I began to change. And through all my homesickness and seemingly constant feeling of missing my loved ones at home, I realized that my heart was splitting. Half of it resided at home, some of it stayed with me in Tennessee and some of it floated aimlessly in between.
I remember the first time I told my mom I would be flying home to Tennessee. Shocked, she turned to me and corrected that I was leaving home, my home was here. I thought through how I wanted to respond, and finally said, “It is. But it’s also there. I have two homes now.” Though she wasn’t totally satisfied by this answer, I was, because it felt true; it felt right. I had two homes now, and putting it in so many words was liberating.
So where is home if my heart is split? Where is my heart if my homes are 1,936.814 miles apart? Home is when I’m with the people I love, wherever they may be. Home is in Oregon with my sister. Home is in San Francisco with my family at a Giants game. Home is in Port Costa with my friends as we fight through a rainstorm down the coast. Home is in Nashville at Live on the Green, happy beyond belief. Home is at church, singing to the God who holds my whole heart. Home is in my dorm room at 3 a.m. playing hot seat with my friends. Home is drinking boba, playing “Headbandz,” laughing when I fail miserably at yet another board game.
Home is changing as I change. But home is beautiful, because it is defined by the beautiful people that I have been blessed enough to be surrounded with. Home is growing and increasing and fluctuating. As Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros would say, “Home is wherever I’m with you.” Thank you, God, for giving me a lot of “yous.”
