home.

It seems everyone I talk to lately is thinking about home. Perhaps because I am surrounded by almost-graduates and graduates, trying to figure out if they go back to the tree from which they flew or scatter off in the wind, searching for somewhere new to put their roots down a while.

Home. Yearning is ancient. I think of the Greek myth where the man spends half his life fighting and longing for it. We all seem to seek it, whatever it means to us.

Home. It used to mean one thing to me. A rainy Juneau day, my parents and brother in their niches of the same house we've lived in for twenty-something years, my childhood friends in the homes they have lived in for twenty-something years, a church of familiar faces, the comfort of routine, a cup of tea and a sleeping dog.

It flusters me so that home isn't home this time. My parents and brother are here, but not in their niches. My niece plays with my old toys, and my room has been stripped of the years of memories tacked on the walls and tucked in corners. My clothes are in a suitcase, and I open the wrong cupboards to get mugs down. My friends are here and there, working and building new lives of their own, and I don't know the babies at church this year.

The twenty years of life I lived calling and feeling it home are closing with a gentle sigh of worn pages. I could feel the close of the chapter coming, but I am sad to put it on the shelf just yet. For what is home?

I find home in the faces of those I love. A heart-home is forever with mom & dad, as they build a new and old home together. I feel home when a friend fetches me from the airport in Seattle, and five more await at our little house we share. I feel home as we hold hands and drape ourselves across one another, sharing stories, laughter, tears and lives. A fledgling home, one I am building for myself.

I wonder at home in the future. I wonder if home is found forever in another soul, when you realize you've found the one whose face you want to see every morning for the rest of your life. I wonder if bits of home scatter with the wind and tide and land all across the earth with those you love, always there but found again when they return. I wonder what happens when some parts of home grow old and die, leaving a longing in your heart, or when you've raised others who find it in you yet must also grow and wander.

Home is something longed for, something held. Where and who shall I call home?