Home.

I was catching up on my Google Reader some more and I happened upon a blog post, titled Where the Heart Is. The author asked "What does home mean to you?" and it got my wheels turning.

As a transplant, I remember first living in Florida & often referred to Connecticut or New England as "back home." It's where my history is. Where I was born, grew up and lived for the first 25 years of my life. I don't recall exactly when it changed, but on one visit back to Connecticut, I made reference to "home," and for the first time realized that I meant Florida. Since that day, I hadn't given it much thought.

Florida *is* my home now. It is where I live. It is where the streets have become familiar. Where palm trees are no longer a novelty. Where I have favorite places to visit, restaurants where I like to eat, stores where I prefer to shop.

But as I really let the question camp out in my thoughts, something new occurred to me.

New England is also still my home. I have memories there. I can still picture the winding, hilly roads I traveled with crystal clarity. It is where stately pines are as familiar along the street edges as palm trees are for me now. I can hear the blend of Massachusetts & New York accents that play at the edge of the voices I know best in Connecticut. I have favorite places I miss visiting, people I miss going to dinner with at restaurants I like, and seasons I miss turning with more obvious distinction.

Home is not a place on a map for me, I've come to understand. Home is Central Florida, with its theme parks and orange blossoms. Home is New England, with its deeply entrenched history--both my own & this great country's--and its magnificent Autumn beauty. Home is California, where I have never laid down roots in any official sense, but can settle right in, as if I'd never left, no matter how long it has been since I was last there.

Home, for me, is where I love. Home is where I *am* loved. There is something to that old cliche "Home is where the heart is." The landscape and the structures, they don't matter. It's the people who I find there that can make anywhere home to me. Because it's seeing their faces, hugging them tight and laughing with joy, that ultimately makes me feel like I've come home.