Taken by the Wind: A Story About Finding Home

In the last eleven years I have had ten addresses. Ten of those yellow DMV cards that go with my driver's license to prove I've moved. Ten U-hauls. Ten keys. Ten fresh starts. Last week I viewed several apartments in search of address number eleven. I have gathered boxes and organized rooms for a potential move this summer. This move is an effort to save a little more money on rent to be able to buy my own home, which means yet another move after this one. I think about my four-year-old daughter, Sophie. This apartment is the only home she remembers having with me. She has a different house with her daddy too. What am I teaching her about the home place? Will she understand its importance? How can I show her how beautiful it is to have one place to come home to, one place that never changes, when I haven't even found that yet? How can I show Sophie how special it is to make a nest, when I've spent most of my adult life floating in the wind?

My childhood house was the only place I ever recognized as home, which is about fifteen minutes outside of Mansfield (where I currently work). I could walk through the door without knocking, throw my luggage by the stairs, and find Dad watching the news in his recliner and Mom stirring homemade chili on the stove. I could speak the way I wanted to speak, and act the way I wanted to act. I don't have a problem being myself in general, but on Ensminger Road there were no restrictions. I was the high-energy, goofball, feminist sister who said what she was thinking and loved everyone and everything without question. I was the free spirited wild card. I was just me.

When the house burned down in 2015, I felt lost for a long time. "Now what?" I wondered. If I couldn't call "the big yellow house with the giant maple tree in the front yard" home, what else would there ever be? Dad rebuilt, but it was no longer home to me. It had become his fresh start, and I wasn't part of it. That's a normal part of growing up. But now I knock before entering, I move around as a guest in a stranger's house, and Mom has never stepped foot inside those doors. This was the beginning of a long learning process for me, because I started to fear that I am without a home.

When I started to travel, people asked me if it was scary to be on the road for such long periods, or to fly alone to unfamiliar places. I told them it wasn't scary. It was thrilling. It felt free to wander. In response, a friend once asked me if I was running away from my problems by traveling. I took offense to this, because my problems can't simply be evaded by flying to another city or country. They're always with me. I don't travel to get away from things, but I do travel in search of some things: Experiences. Beauty. People. Moments. Strength. Purpose. Courage. Laughter. These are bits of life that I gather in my travels and tuck them carefully into my backpack to carry with me. I don't travel to run, I travel to learn. Through my travels I began to understand that I was leaving pieces of myself everywhere I went, and I was taking new pieces with me when I left.

My experience in grad school was also pivotal to this journey. I began work on my own book, a memoir. Although I thought it was going to be about my late mother, it morphed into something much bigger--a story about home. "What is home?" My professor once asked. My thoughts went to the yellow house on Ensminger Road. I sat with a blank sheet of paper and a pen alone in my apartment for hours before answering this question. I wanted to write "brown shutters, covered porch, flower boxes, back yard, red dining room." But they weren't there anymore. They no longer existed. I thought about the reasons I travel, the things I mentally pack into my carry-on for later. I thought about what makes a house a home. Finally I wrote "Mom" at the top of the page and put down my pen. I stared at the word until my vision blurred. The answer to this question was so much deeper than coordinates on a map. It was more than structure and place. It was also people, and moments, and all those things we carry with us. I picked up my pen and didn't stop writing until suddenly it was 2am. I shuffled through the words and phrases that defined home, sat back, and sighed a long, uneven sigh. Maybe I was never really searching for home. Maybe I was collecting it.

I am 29 years old and still looking for a new place to live. Maybe I'll find one soon. Maybe I'll keep accumulating those little yellow address cards for the rest of my life. Maybe I'll keep exploring city after city, and country after country in search of a sense of belonging. But that doesn't mean I'm without a home, and it doesn't mean I'm teaching my daughter something negative about the home place. Because I have finally learned what that really means. For people like me who often feel dislocated, it's important to remember the things we carry that give us that sense of home.

Home is the smell of freshly mowed grass, and the taste of just-picked strawberries under the scorching July sun. Home is "eat your vegetables or you can't have dessert," and "don't make me count to three." It's the smell of burgers on the grill while we play volleyball in the yard, and the use of my middle name when I've screwed up. It's sunbathing in the back yard, and the smell of heat and dust on long summer drives on the mountain. Home is the sound of Sophie's giggles when I make silly faces in the rear view mirror on the way to daycare. It's the stories that strangers told me on a farm in Belize, and a chat about American politics in a pub in Ireland. It's sitting next to my mother on a beach in North Carolina without saying a word, but having a deep understanding for each other all the same. Home is a friendly smile from someone I've never met, because it reminds me that there are still kind people in the world. Home is every time I've fallen in love, especially that time that knocked the wind out of me, and every time someone hurt me, and every time someone confided in me, and every time someone held my hand, or wrapped their arms around me, or told me I would be okay. Home is every hotel room I slept in, and couch I surfed, and hand I shook, and plane I boarded, and U-Haul I loaded, and key I turned. I am not without a home. I've been home all along.