Home, carry your heart with you

I used to think home was some place I could create. Or recreate. The thing is, you don't actually create it, certainly not by yourself. I'd say that, for some folks, it simply exists. It hasn't changed since childhood. It's their parent's home or their grandparent's home. It's a home that goes back in time, that has history not only in years but in experience. Whether it is big or small, the good holidays were there, the momentous changes came there, all the sharing times, sometimes the jarring times. Truth is, I had something like that, I guess. 

We used to visit my grandparents on Cape Cod. It was a cottage, but big enough for us to fit in. We visited it in the summers when anyone in New York would pay good money to live anywhere else. During the school year, I moved so many times as a kid that I don't have a home that sticks out as being "home." My attempts to build a home have fallen apart (divorce, etc.) and I've gotten used to being on my own. The summer home was not really home, though. My grandparents were the kind you visit. And my homes have changed and mutated over the years. My kids have moved. I've moved. So, where is home? Where is it? What does it mean? I have to ask myself that question as I have another move looming. 

E. E. Cummings had it right when he said, "I carry your heart with me. I carry it in my heart." Now, as I set out on another voyage to home, moving to a different state and choosing to be 3,000 miles away from my (grown) kids, I need to remind them and myself that the heart can carry love. Miles don't matter. Sometimes you wind up where you need to be and sometimes you have to pull up stakes and go to where you need to be. That's just the way it is. My daughter might "lend me" her cat to keep me company. He's an eight year old orange tabby who gets crabby if he doesn't eat every two and a half hours, a lot like me, actually. But he won't arrive until after I've gotten there to set up the new home. Recreating home is something that excites me and terrifies me. It's exciting because I've scoped down so much that spreading out and having an art room will be glorious. It's terrifying because I guess I'm just getting more scared as I grow old. But I'm going to stick with excited. It's an adventure and one should not turn them down too often.
[this is the first of, what will likely be, a series of ruminations on home]

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