What's "HOME"?

Recently, a friend of mine wrote on my Facebook wall the following (after I posted pics of my NYC trip):

"It looks like you have been on a lot of fun trips! When are you coming home?!?!?"

I didn't think much of it and at first glance, I thought she meant 'when are you coming home from your trips, you're gone a lot.' So I commented back that I was done traveling for a while after the Florida trip in April. It was a couple days later when I was reading things on my wall that I realized she actually meant "When are you coming HOME - to Minnesota?" It didn't even occur to me when I initially read her comment!

In some ways, Minnesota will ALWAYS be home - it's where I grew up and experienced all of the fun and wonder of childhood. Other than my 5 years in college - which I spent in Wisconsin - I have lived in Minnesota from conception to age 27. I very much associate myself with being a Minnesotan - even now, having been gone for 6 years. I will always see Minnesota as my beginning, but I have to say that I feel Texas is my HOME now.

I basically don't have any family left in Minneapolis (where I grew up) so I don't see it as "going home" because there's not really a "home" to go to anymore. If I go back, I am staying in a hotel or a friend's house and that is fine, but I wouldn't consider it "home." I would consider that visiting friends. My Mom lives in northern Minnesota for half the year, but that house is "my parents' house" - I never called that home, even when I lived in Minneapolis and they were up north. I always felt that it was their retirement home, not "Home" to me because I never lived there. There are no memories there.

I haven't been back to Minnesota since 2007 and some would think that's weird or crazy, but it just doesn't feel natural to go back anymore. I love love love Minnesota and have FANTASTIC memories of my childhood there and a lot of my WONDERFUL friends live there, but it just feels different to go back - like I'm a stranger or a prodigal daughter, returning to a place that I left a long time ago for greener pastures. When I drive past my childhood home and see that the current owners have changed things, it upsets me - as if they are stomping on the grave of my childhood without any regard for my memories! I know this is irrational, but I really do have such STRONG emotions when I go back to my old neighborhood. It makes me almost cry just thinking about it right now!

I know, I know - I'm a very emotional person.....but I can't help it. I want to go back to Minnesota to visit my friends, many of whom I haven't seen in a long time....but I have reservations about the emotions that will resurface. You would think that it would be such a happy thing to go back, but it makes me miss my Dad, Grandma and my family as one unit, back in the New Hope house. I am a very nostalgic person and it's sad that all of that is just gone. Even going back to Ohio last summer to visit friends....I was really worried about how I would feel going back there - since I spent the darkest days of my life there. But I was pleasantly surprised....the trip was fantastic and I had a BLAST seeing my friends and enjoying every minute. I guess you just never know how you will feel about something until you just overcome those reservations and try it, huh?

At any rate, I think that the only place that I can call home is where I am resting my head. That makes me sound like a nomad, a drifter......but I'm not. I finally feel like I belong somewhere....and that somewhere is right here in my house in Texas. I'm home!