Home

Last Wednesday, I flew home to Portland.
My dad picked me up at the airport and we drove home to Tualatin.
I spent all day Friday at my home church in Lake Oswego, decorating and planning for a wedding.
Today, my parents and brother and I left our home and drove to the airport, where Neal and I checked in for two separate flights, taking us home to San Diego and Spokane respectively.

As is usual of a trip back to the area I grew up, I'm thinking about the concept of home.  I lived in the same house my entire childhood, and then found myself living somewhere completely not my house for college.  Initially shocked, I adjusted well and soon found myself referring to Spokane and Whitworth as home as well.  I remember being embarrassed the first time I did so in front of my parents, fearing that they (well, really, just my mom) would be offended.  She probably was, but she didn't say anything, so I kept up the double usage, and to this day, if I were speaking to you in Seattle and said I was heading home, it would be anybody's guess as to which city I was referring.

Apparently a sense of place and home is a big deal for us human beings.  We need to know where we have been and where we are to know and understand where we are going.  It has not always been this way for all peoples- nomads certainly have a different understanding of these concepts.  But I fall into the non-nomadic category of human being and home is huge for me.  When I was younger, place and home were synonymous.  Now, the distinction is becoming apparent as some places that were once home are no longer as homey, and other places initially foreign are now familiar and dear and safe in all the ways that a home should be.  I don't handle change particularly well, and I've been struggling with what it means for home to a moveable concept that changes with me for the last couple of years.  I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to do about it all, but today I had the distinct pleasure of experiencing a bit of home in both places that I have referred to as such over the years.  Breakfast with a dear Portland friend this morning, dinner with a dear Spokane friend this evening.  Time with my family both at our house and in transit.  A good book and sunshine at almost every interval today.  Home definitely exists in the intangibles every bit as much, if not more so, than in the things I can see and touch and taste, but I'm an experiential person, so the places matter to me too.  And I guess, as long as Southwest Air continues to offer good prices for flights to and from Portland, I don't have to decide which is home quite yet.