Thursday, October 16, 2008

Going Home

I have just moved back to New York. For most of the last twenty eight years, I have lived in California, but now I've gone home. Or have I?

I left behind the first house I've ever owned; a house that I loved the minute I saw it, and loved more every day of the eight years I lived in it. It's rented to someone else now, but I still own it. I know that when I move back into it, however many years from now that may be, it will be home.

Far more important than the house, I left behind the person who is most important to me in my life. When I visit California, the house where she lives is my home.

The house in Brooklyn where I live now belongs to my oldest and dearest friend. She has owned it for thirty years. It is a place I have known well for that entire time, and I lived in it for two years about 15 years ago. It's definitely home.

My elderly parents live in a senior community condo in neighboring New Jersey. They bought it upon their retirement twenty three years ago, when they could still enjoy the amenities it offered - the golf course, the pool, the health club. That condo is home, too, although they bought it after I moved to California, and I have never lived there.

Yesterday, I took the bus to New Jersey to see my parents, and, when I left Brooklyn, I told my friend that I was "going home" for the day. When I left my parents' house to return to Brooklyn, I told them I was "going home". I realized that, twice in one day, I had left home to go home. In fact, almost all of the journeys I will make in the next few months will be from one home to another. It's much better to have too many homes than not enough. I'm really lucky.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are lucky. Not too many people have more than one home.

Anonymous said...

You can go home again. Maybe not in the same way but what comfort the thought gives us when we face both growing up and away and our own mortality. My children are moving east and one day I may follow... why not? If I knew then what I knew now- I'm not sure I would have ever left NY for sunny CA...
Always
Arava