Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Returning home...

So yesterday I returned to the last place we called HOME about 30 miles north of where we live now. It's a small community at 5200 ft elevation with a beautiful mountain view but it is cold and windy which is why we moved from there to a lower elevation with no snow. The people there are so friendly in my old HOME, and it was fun to visit the Daughters of Utah Pioneers group that I started six years ago when we first moved to this rural town and retired. Started with ten members, the group has grown to over thirty or more. I knew everyone there and was so pleased that the group was still carrying on with many of the ideas I introduced as their leader. The only person I didn't know at the meeting came up to me and said "don't you remember me? I bought your house." So I knew her also, but not very well.

What I'd like to discuss is where is HOME? I have lived so many different places in my lifetime including Utah, California, Wisconsin and Brazil. I don't have a specific place I'd call HOME. My grandparents' HOMES have all been bulldozed in the small Utah communities where I once lived as a child near or with them. My ten years in California were spent in a trailer court so that has changed also. Even my mom lived in a mobile HOME in Utah Valley before she went into a care facility-it belongs to someone else now. So I feel HOME-less. I have owned HOMES in several Utah towns but they have been sold and belong to others now. To return HOME to me, means my current HOME where I am putting down roots. As I returned to my last community yesterday I realized that what makes a HOME feel that way is the memories you have and the relationships with your friends and family that were created in that one place. So in that sense, I have many HOMES.

Ultimately we'll all go HOME to where we lived with our Heavenly parents before we were born and will have a great HOME-coming with our deceased family members who have gone on before us. Then I believe we will truly be HOME as it is not a place but a feeling of togetherness with family and friends with love and peace.

15 comments:

  1. I love your door. I just painted my front door a "Burning Bush" color. It is red, but not real red.

    Home to me is where I was born and raised. Where I live now is not home, it where "I live."

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  2. I love the door, too! I've lived in so many places that I had to think about that one for a bit. I guess Portland, Oregon would be my favorite and the one I will always consider home. I'm happy here in Seattle, but I'll always miss Portland and Oregon.

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  3. Your right about HOME being wherever your family lives at the time. My mother thinks I am coming HOME when I get to her house, even though I did not ever live there. When I was younger, it was grandma and grandpa's house. Home is an attitude I guess.

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  4. I think home is where you live, and it includes past homes. When you talk about your life, like when you were a kid, you would say, "when I got home, ...."

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  5. I grow up in air force.. I am living in my 27th place since I was born. oddly enough this is the only place I own. I thought of this subject many times myself, as an immigrant, what is home? Home is in my heart and it moves with me where ever I go. it gives me peace to think that way.. I do like your door as well :)

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  6. I remember a year or two after getting married, saying something to Wayne about going "home" to see my mom. He looked at me for the longest time...then he said, "I thought your home was with me now." And he was right. My home is wherever he is, wherever we are sharing the life we've built together.

    But so much of me is drawn to the ocean's edge...to the village I was raised in... to entended family... to the comforts found in being surrounded by those familiar places and people that helped shape me.

    Maybe there's a difference in GOING home and BEING home. I don't know. Interesting thought. Interesting comments.

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  7. I have a whole string of homes, too. I don't think of where I live now as home, not yet anyway. There's the place I grew up, and the place I lived the longest and liked the best... Funny how we make all those distinctions in our heads.

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  8. The old saying goes "home is where the heart is". Hopefully that's also where you are living.

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  9. I love your door hanging. It's so homey. I guess home really is where your heart is. I have my heart split between two places. Illinois and Hawaii

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  10. Beautiful thoughts, Lin. As one who grew up in a deeply rooted New England family and traveled quite a lot, I have found that I take home with me wherever I am. Connecticut, my home, is quite portable!

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  11. Good post, Lin. Therefore, the old saying is totally true - "Home is where the heart is."

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  12. I too love the door!

    I guess that old adage is true, home is where the heart is. One thing I noticed when I moved from a home I'd lived many years with a girlfriend before I married Rick, it took a while for my heart and my head to wrap around my new home (even though I was happy with Rick).

    The day I noticed that I stopped referring to my previous home as "home", I knew my heart had transferred along with my body....Now I am home.

    You know what I love about questions like this, it really helps me to sort out what I think and believe about things. Until it's articulated, it remains vague and shadowy. So thanks Lin for the lovely prods!

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  13. I've moved so many times. I was born in Louisiana, but it's Texas, Colorado, Alabama and Tennessee that pull at my heart. And because of the friends I have there...I think Texas (both Dallas & Houston) will always feel like home to me.

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  14. It's funny, my daughter just returned to NY state after 8 years in Ohio and then Oklahoma and she was so happy to return "home" which meant to NY...

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