The heart is the home

Where I come from, the phrase “home is where the heart is” has no meaning. To us, the heart is where home is.

When I think of home I think of coffee. I think laughter. I think laughter induced tears. I think winter days in front of the television. I think failed compliments and successful criticisms. I think of toothy smiles and hopeful frowns. I think of voice cracking anger and 007 movie marathons.

I imagine gravy drenched dumplings and awkward embraces.

I think of strenuous tolerance and effortless endurance. I think star gazing and rain dancing. I think country music Sunday mornings and daily pranks. I see my mother’s face and smell my sister’s perfume. I feel my nephew’s gaze (sometimes a shameless stare) and hear my mother’s voice. I hear unvoiced I love you’s” and taste the poetry of emotion.

I feel the warmth of my mother’s bed and understand unconditional love and unadulterated compassion.

The way I see it, home does not have to be a place. My idea of home is rooted in feeling, space and experience. My family has a house in at least four locations, and if I were to base my understanding of the notion of home on site alone I would have to consider myself a nomad of sorts. A drifter. Place is irrelevant to my conception of home.

As far as I am concerned, if I live under a rock for the rest of my days with my family around me…that rock is home. If I have rubbed my mother’s feet and knelt before her while she plaited my hair under that rock, that rock represents home to me and the ants should start packing.

Home is conversation. It is insanity, it is sublime nonsense, it is memory.

My earliest memories of home are not of a house or a fence. They are not of landscapes and doorknobs. My earliest memories of home are of shared laughter under clear blue skies. My fondest memories are not of buildings, sandpits and train tracks. They are of advice in the guise of my mother’s anecdotes of past mistakes.

Home is a feeling. A sense of belonging.

My home is wherever my family is.

My home is where my mom’s smile is, it is where my sister’s non-embraces are and where my aunt’s actual embraces are, it is where my cousin’s voice is.

My home is everywhere my family is, and I’m ok with that.