{"id":213,"date":"2016-06-28T22:29:31","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T03:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/?p=213"},"modified":"2016-06-28T22:30:40","modified_gmt":"2016-06-29T03:30:40","slug":"no-place-like-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/no-place-like-home\/","title":{"rendered":"No Place Like Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent the weekend thinking about what home means to me, trying to prepare myself to write something for Charli Mills\u2019 Carrot Ranch prompt<\/a> this week. I brainstormed memories from all the homes I have lived in (and I\u2019ve lived in a lot), trying to find a pattern or inspiration or\u2026something.<\/p>\n

Now, I have more than my fair share of memories from home that make me smile\u2014Scooby Doo every single Saturday morning, gin rummy with my grandmother, the smell of sun-dried chlorine, and Christmas lights\u2026oh, the hundreds of thousands of tiny white lights! (I\u2019ll save those lights for another post.) But when someone says the word home<\/em>, my mind goes blank. Well, that\u2019s not true. Actually I think about boxes and suitcases.<\/p>\n

I lived in at least eight different homes before I turned eighteen, so it\u2019s not all that surprising that after high school, I moved on average every two years until I was thirty-five. That\u2019s at least another nine homes (and trust me, it was more than that). I\u2019ve lived in another two homes since I turned thirty-five, so I have lived in about twenty homes in forty-five years.<\/p>\n

Twenty homes.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve lived in my current home for five years as of last month, but I still am not even halfway done with unpacking boxes. I stayed in my previous home the longest, lasting until the month after I unpacked that last box, at which point I contacted a realtor. I\u2019m sure there are some underlying psychological issues going on with me, but let\u2019s not explore that today.<\/p>\n

My thoughts about home experienced a new flurry of activity when I met up with some high school friends. It was the first time we\u2019ve all hung out together in almost thirty years. We were part of the group who scattered as far from our hometown as possible once graduation rolled around. We joked about how one woman had gone off the grid for more than two decades and had only relatively recently been able to return home to her parents\u2019 house. Another friend moved home several years ago to wait for his father to die. These two friends also had complicated ideas of home. The former had run away from home as an adult to deal with her struggles to understand who she really was while the latter had run back home for a few more moments at his father\u2019s bedside. Yet both felt extremely uncomfortable at home and were anxious for the moment when they could escape once again.<\/p>\n

Home. It\u2019s such a powerful word. Heck, the advertising field has made millions by depicting homecomings as warm, loving returns to a safe, secure place.<\/p>\n