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.