The holidays have got me thinking about the concept of home. Where is home? Maybe a better question would be what is home? The dictionary defines home this way: home - Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[hohm] - noun, adjective, adverb, verb, homed, hom·ing. –noun 1. a house, apartment, or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person, family, or household. 2. the place in which one's domestic affections are centered. 3. a person's native place or own country. After a long evening in the library I will tell a study buddy I am going "home" to go to bed. By that I mean I am going to the residence hall where I pay a little over a grand a semester to sleep and shower. After a three week stretch at school I will tell my friends with much joy, that I am going "home" for the weekend. By that I mean I am going to Moscow, TN where my family lives, a general area. When I punch the time clock at 4:30 I say to my supervisor that I am going "home". By that I mean I am going to my parents three-bed/two bath-house, an actual dwelling. I went to visit my brother yesterday. We rode over to his grandmother's, whom we call "nanny" and ate supper. (At nanny's the evening meal is always referred to as "supper".) The brown shag carpet sagged a little more since I had been there a year earlier, so did the skin under nanny's chin and eyes. Even with the added wrinkles she looked pretty. Her cheeks were red with Dollar Store blush, and she wore a new necklace her best friend, Allie Mae, had given her for Christmas. There were three places set at the table. "Are you expecting company?" I asked. We didn't call before we came. "You, silly." she said and went to work putting ice in the glasses. My step-mother must have called after we left. I went to the bathroom to wash my hands and that's when I felt it. No, not nausea or an uncontrollable urge to pee. Home, I felt home. Maybe it was the sticky blue linoleum or the scent of Aqua Net hair spray in the air. I had visited that house only once a year since I was thirteen, but the countless hours I had spent there in the summer as a child had formed a connection in my memory that time nor adulthood could sever. Tomorrow I am meeting my two roommates from Acadia Summer Project in Byrdstown, TN. We are going to stay up late eating ice cream talking about life, love, and spirituality. Saturday we will hike if the weather permits. In June I was amazed at how after only four short weeks coming back to a cold crammed cabin to them at night felt very much like coming home. In fact the anticipation I feel about tomorrow, about driving to a semi-remote location which I have never been, feels like going home.

When coming home from school the first place I go after I pay off my sleep debt and eat real food is my Maw Maw's. The home she and my Paw Paw have built is beautiful. It's a home not of brick and mortar but of the kind of love that teaches children to become good humans who are able to make good choices because they know they are loved. I was not one of those children or even grandchildren. My mother paid Maw Maw to watch me on the week days while she worked. Mom tells me that every penny she paid Maw Maw she turned around and spent it right back on me, buying me candy or clothes. I was an unlikely recipient of her home-ish love. I don't know when it happened, but somewhere along the way her house ceased to be where my babysitter lived and became home to me.

Sometimes home is a place where you have logged so many mundane hours that the smell of hairspray takes you back in an instant. Other times home is internal--something that no longer surrounds you, but has moved inside of you.