Home is where the heart is????

Home is where the heart is???…
The concept of home is something I’ve had a lot of time to contemplate and reconsider since I’ve arrived in Africa. The house I grew up in has been in the custody of others for a few years, and they have changed it so as to be almost unrecognizable as the place I was formed, so that place has lived on in my memory rather than my heart. The places I’ve stayed since college have had very goldilocks qualities overall, and haven’t been much more than temporary stops on the search for the feeling of home.
I’ve left the apartment in Minneapolis that had me feeling kept, and where I could have been happy, or perhaps content, I suppose, were I ever able to ignore the fact that it had become too tiny and tight on my skin, and came to Africa. I’ve moved from Molopolole, living with a family, a home in the most traditional of senses, but which always felt more like a place I happened to be staying. I’ve arrived in Seronga, which I have struggled with and fought for and against. I had at one point begun to think that maybe home was a feeling you had with a person, but this theory has failed its test as well.
When home is best defined, the descriptives that resonate with me are of a safe and warm place you can always go back to, that understands you, and represents something to you in terms of physical space. A place that may have not always been roses and sunshine, but has taught and shaped you through trials and time, through joys and heartbreak. The formative moments of a life happen here, you are both cradled and thrown to the waves, and the weather, but it is also a safe haven from the storm that is living.
The one place I consistently think of as home would be my grandparent’s lake place. They purchased it when I was in at the end of my childhood, moving rapidly towards the tumultousness of adolescence and an angst that I’ve never completely grown out of. I witnessed it transform from an overgrown plot to a home, with beautifully manicured gardens and the kind of porch you envision coming back to again and again to watch the sunset. I’ve watched bonfires and dog performances, seen cousins wobble along with their first steps and later learn to drive the golf cart through the yard. There were always boat rides and summer nights spent catching fireflies, and snowy winters watching the icicles form and the lake freeze over while feeling warm and cozy over a cup of hot chocolate with the ever present marshmallows and extra buttery popcorn. Lake Pokegema had all the best and worst qualities of a small town, so while the Dairy Queen and Wal-mart “in town” were the main attractions, the dentist there was able to fill my wisdom teeth dry sockets on a random walk in appointment. I was there for my birthday/Labor day weekend celebration when I learned of Princess Diana’s death, an event that for me became the “where were you when you found Kennedy had been assassinated” situation of my generation.
Pine City was the halfway point between my college and my hometown, and was the place I could always find a way to afford to drive to or hitch a ride to during those years and ever after. It was actually the first place I learned to officially drive a car (and use cruise control, and hit a bird) with my learner’s permit over the heavily trafficked 4th of July weekend. I had a key, and could always get in, even if my grandparents weren’t there, and the light was left on for me no matter what insane hour of the night I arrived. It was the place I escaped to to study for finals and write papers, to decompress, to relax or to just get away from it all. I’ve brought every guy I’ve ever been very serious about there, and carefully gauged his reaction to what I considered my own personal Eden. I often went there on Christmas Eve, and most holidays, random summer weekends, and have been known to drop everything and drive there at the first sign of chaos in my life. I have gone there repeatedly to pick up the broken pieces of myself in an attempt to put humpty dumpty back together again after all of life’s big falls (and break-ups, career direction changes, big decisions, and life reroutings). It was the one place I never felt I had to escape from in order to find myself and be at peace.
Due to sad and unfortunate circumstances outside anyone’s control, the home in Pine City was sold this week. I will miss it, and had never imagined that when I left it for my last visit in March that it would be our final goodbye. For me it is another exercise in letting go, and the impermanence and uncertainty of life and spaces and circumstance. The loss of this physical place in my life and has taught me one last beautiful lesson about what lives on in the heart. To Pine City and Lake Pokegema, and the house at 13924, thank you for everything, life and home will never be the same.