#Home

I was cleaning out one of my dad's homes yesterday and started to think about "HOME". What is your happy place? Is it a physical space? A mental space? Where do you go when you need to rejuvenate your soul and your heart?

Most people think of that place as where you go to at night, sleep everyday, and ultimately where your family is, where they reside...a roof over your head.

But as I think about it, "HOME" is often more of a FEELING, not a physical place. Ideally when I leave work I want to go home. Home is where my girls are, where my husband is, where I have created a space that I love (love/hate depending on how much work there is in it to do sometimes). But its where I feel at ease and happy and relaxed. It's what I work so hard for. It's where I want to curl up with a blanket and relax. Once I experience empty nest (when is this again....hopefully a long time from now)... I want my girls to be able to come - to come "home"...and to them to think of "home" as wherever I am or wherever my husband is.

But the sad part of mortality is that one day I won't be here and neither will my husband and my two daughters (both ages 2 and almost 5) will have to recreate their own "homes". Isn't that the rub?

So where do I go now?  Where is my "Home?" It shifts now and then, from the inside of my four door sedan or our SUV for a few hours at a time when I drive back and forth taking care of the multiple needs of our family...or it shifts to my "work home" where I actually spend more time away from my family than I want but take care of dental needs of others day in and day out. I always come back "home" to my husband and my girls. Home plate...home base...same difference.

I still feel like when I am with my mom I am home. I have sadly had and continue to have a complex relationship with my mom. I have struggled with the relationship with my mom for decades...perhaps it started in infancy. While there are things that I would definitely NOT mimic I have actually adopted many of the things she taught me in how I raise my girls. High standards, a mix of both discipline and love and presence. Where my mom lives and when I visit her I feel at "home"...like I did when I grew up and can easily fall back into the role of a child trying to please her parents.

But as I contemplate mortality again and contemplate HOME I realize that I actually removed myself from my mom's physical space for over 5 years  - a few months before my wedding in 2011 was the last time I spoke to her until my father's death in 2016. In that time I got married (to a man my mother didn't like for God knows what reason), got pregnant, had my first daughter....got pregnant again, and had my second daughter...I realize that my current "home" base and my own life and "home" was created without my mother being present for any of it. 

If I wanted a pity party for myself then I could hear myself even say to me "Damn, that is super sad." and would I want my girls to do this, the answer would be HELL NO. But this is my reality and the pragmatic part of me says...just suck it up and deal with it. As the saying goes "It is, what it is."

I buried my dad today. Now that my dad is gone I ask myself - was dad "home" for me as well. In some ways I realize that knowing that he was always there was a great comfort to me...and therefore a possible "home". But the funny thing about my dad was that he had multiple physical "homes" of his own, but I don't know his "home" was...or where is "heart" really was. The relationship that he had with my my mom was not great...to say the least...and while he loved her in his own way...I wouldn't say that when he was with my mom that was what he considered home.

It is sad to say that I feel that my dad's home was in solitude. That he was happiest when he was alone and doing his own thing. I feel sad because I had hoped that his own children, his son and daughter would provide a "home" for him...seeing his grand-daughter's grow up...having his own home base. But if I reach into my soul and answer truthfully I think being alone was truly his "home". After he lost his own parents perhaps he was lost too. And usually you hope you have a partner in life to go through it, who you have created your own home with, that will prevent you from missing the home your parents hopefully created.

Personally...To me... home shouldn't be lonely...it should be noisy and crazy and have people coming in and out of it...with food flowing and a mixture of silliness and crying and laughing.... a haven of sorts when the entire world has slapped you in the face and you have nowhere else to go...it welcomes you in and you take from it what you need so that you can go back into the world again guns blazing. But I know that for many this isn't the case...hell it isn't the case for me either...but I will try and create this ideal world for my kids as long as I am alive.

"Home is where the heart is."