Exactly Where is Home??

For Some Reason, I never posted this.  So here it is now.


This post is for a very good friend of mine that recently posted about the surreal experience of your parents moving from the place you call "home".  This brought to mind  how do you to define "home".

As a child that grows up and leaves "home", you  end up creating a home with your own family, but on some level  mom and dad still live in the place you grew up.  They are the roots that even as an adult you sometimes need to be rooted to a place.  They are the sense of belonging that we all seem to search for and need behind us.  This might be doubly important to those of us that move away from the area that is home.  Once we move away and then our "roots" move away, we do not have anything drawing us back.  While many our friends still live there, our roots have uprooted and moved on. 

Maybe friends should be enough to bring us back, but the reality is that our lives grow in different directions especially those of us that have completely moved from the area that we were "rooted" to.  Intentions are good but sometimes they are hard to follow through.  I mean to go visit friends that still live in the Atlanta area when we visit with my in laws but somehow it is just hard to do. I know that my mom has classified Florida as home for many years even when we lived in Georgia, but she was born in Connecticut started school in Vermont and finished in New York.  Most times she classifies herself  as being from New York.  She has not been back "home" but 2 times that I remember in my lifetime. And the person that showed me her "hometown" was my Aunt.  My dad is from Ohio and has been back one time in my lifetime.  I visited there as a very young child but not at an age that I can remember,  In both situations, their parents moved from their respective "hometowns".

Now my friend stated that she adopted a place as home, but I suspect like me it is home because that is where she and her family now reside.  I have lived in central Florida in the same house for 10 years and yes it home but it is not the same feeling  I get when we drive into Atlanta.  I feel the "roots" pulling me as we drive into the city and many times I feel the pull to follow  I-75 as we drive in and to go "home".  As time goes, I am sure that pull will lessen since it has only been 8 years since my parents left "home".  I am in many ways fortunate in that my parents followed me to Central Florida.  I suppose in a way the roots followed me, but is not the same.