Dulce Domum

Every dictionary I check has at least six definitions for "home" -one had more than twenty- but none of them captures my sense of the word. To me, home is not exactly a place but a feeling. It must be a place I feel I know well, a place where I am familiar with the people and the landscape; it's where I am in sync with the rythms and comfortable in the surroundings; it's where even the atmosphere feels right. It is where I belong.

Listen to the word. h-OOO-MMM-e. It even sounds like strength and comfort, doesn't it? Yet, I'm not exactly sure where or what home is for me. I knew once, or thought I did. But now. . .

I grew up in a suburb of Nashville, TN. It was an odd sort of in-between place, too rural to be the city and too developed to be the country. It was houses, houses, houses all around without a single store and only one small horse pasture. Certainly, I had friends who lived close by; my school was pretty good; and our house was roomy enough. But the place was totally lacking in any sense of atmosphere. I never considered it home.

"Home" in my youth meant our family farm in Mississippi. No one remembers exactly how long the land has been in the family. My great-great-grandparents lived on part of it when my great-grandmother met and married my great-grandfather. The latter bought and added most of the rest of the 80 acres before he died when my grandfather was 8. There is a small cemetery on this "new" portion, containing mostly unmarked graves and two tombstones with the name "Scott" on them, but my grandmother has no idea who these Scotts were. I always loved the farm and spent as much time there as I could. The barn, fields, pastures, and ponds all seemed a part of me. But after my grandfather died, a tornado blew away the barn and other farm buildings, and my great uncle sold off the cattle herd, the place just didn't feel like it used to. In addition, everything is poverty and ruin in the deep South, and a radical conservative faction has such a strangle hold on the economy and politics that I no longer feel like I belong there and haven't for some time.

As a young twenty-something, I moved from the suburbs into Nashville. I had a good job downtown, good friends, and I walked the streets like I was born to them. I knew all of the best cafes, and each tree and statue was like an old friend. At night, I would go out on the town. I always knew where the best bands were playing and when, and I was a regular at several clubs and pubs. But then I moved away to start college. When I go back to Nashville to visit family, I feel like a stranger in the city. There are new buildings and new venues, and I am out of touch with the spirit of the place.

The small town my university was in was never really home to me. It was always a temporary stopping place, and it quickly felt alien once my friends and I graduated. I've been back there too, and it is comfortably familiar, but I cannot imagine living there now.

While in college, I participated in a summer abroad program and lived in London for a time. There again I found home. The cosey blend of cutting-edge city and centuries-old tradition suited my personality perfectly, and my long love of British literature made me intimate with the people, spaces, and culture like no place I'd ever been. I would gladly have remained there forever, but it was not meant to be. I had to return home at the close of the program. I have since paid it an all-too-short visit, and the old sense of returning home was with me just as strongly. But it is not practical to consider living there. It's too expensive, and immigration to the UK is difficult for non-europeans. I will have to be satisfied with occasional visits and a name of expatriot.

Then came Boston. My affiliation with "Beantown" began when my sister's family moved to western Massachusetts in 1992 or '93. They lived there for 5 years, and whenever I would travel north to visit them, we would go into Boston. It reminded me very much of an American London, and I knew that someday I would live there. And I did, for three years. At first, it required a lot of acclimation. I came from a world of Walmarts, suburban malls, and sprawling ranch houses. Boston is a dense city of boutiques and townhouses. I adapted to many things quickly, but much of the everyday took a little more effort. Still, I felt like I belonged there as I walked the streets, rode the "T", hung out in the pubs, or had lunch on the Common. How I miss it.

But I could not stay there. Again, it is too expensive, and no matter how comfortable I was in this bustling old city, I longed for a sense of space that it seems hostile to. Eventually it wore me down until I was tired and angry like most northeasterners, and that just didn't feel like me. So, DW and I moved to California.

If I lived here until the day I died, I would never feel at home here. Everything from the food to the trees makes me aware at every moment that I am an outsider. A lot of people, thousands each year, move to this sunny state, desiring exactly the things that alienate me. And to be sure, there is nothing innately wrong with these things. They just aren't for me.

But by this point, I have forgotten what is. I have lived and loved in so many places, each with it's good and bad, each feeling a little like home for a day or a season. . . but none of them, ultimately, filling the bill. I know all of the platitudes: "Home is where the heart is." "Home is where you hang your hat." "Home is where DW is at." "Home is..." "Home is..." Perhaps it is, in the final analysis, not that which is known, but that which is unknowable.