"Home is Where Your Rump Rests"

Quoth Pumba the warthog in Lion King.

Last weekend I went home to Pennsylvania. It had been nearly 9 months since I was last there. This visit, however, was not one of lazy lounging and going from place to place. My mom is moving to Arizona...which by the way is awesome and I can't wait to visit her...and we spent part of the weekend packing up boxes and transporting stuff out of her house.

In the ten years that I lived in Columbus I moved a grand total of 8 times. One of those moves was out of my Bon Air home into the aforementioned home in Portage in the summer after my Freshman year. I remember being pretty cranky about the entire experience...believing, at the time, that it mattered where you lived.

But it doesn't. Home is not made up of walls, knick knacks, dishes and familiar neighborhoods. Home is that quiet place where you return to when the real world is just a little bit too loud. But for me...no one building has offered me the same amount of solace and peace as any of my family and friends. When I am feeling "home sick" it isn't the structural stuff I miss. Its the people, laughter, and random activities.

I remember a discussion in my Palliative Care class last spring about attaching emotion to objects. There is a little exercise that spurs the discussion...but it boils down to really examining what is important. For those who are curious...I have the exercise...really very powerful...shoot me a post and I can email it to you. Basically you have a list of 20 things from various categories that you "treasure" as the exercise continues you are forced to cross things off that list. In the end you have nothing (symbolic of someone battling a chronic illness and eventually dying). I remember two of the "objects" that were on my list. The first was my wedding band (my husband and I were still living in different states at the time) and the second was my Teddy Bear (Victor, who I have had for 25 years). It took me a very long time to cross these things off...until I realized that I would still have my marriage if I lost my ring and I would still have the happy memories of my childhood without my bear.

I could tell that packing up her specially customized little house was hard for Mom. I remember packing to leave PA to move to OH (kicking and screaming) and then packing to leave OH to move to NC (remembering the previous kicking and screaming). It's never easy to pick up and go. But thanks to technology we can always call "home." We can always hop on a plane and be surrounded by "home" if we need it. Or..."home" can come to us.

Its not about your house or your job or your car. Just like its not the ring that makes the marriage. Its the people, experience and memories that make home, and life for that matter, what it is.

As I prepare to move...again...into my brand new home in a few months, I think back to all of the places that I lived. Rarely can I really picture the actual building, but you better believe that I can see the faces of the people, smell the smells and hear the sounds that are associated with them. And though there have been a few bumps in the road here and there...I wouldn't change any of those residences because now they all hold a little piece of my ultimate "home."

Good luck in your move Mom! Save a room for us! As for those pieces of my "home" that are scattered all over the country and world...I miss you all! And for those new pieces that I have just met or are still waiting....I welcome you!