Home Is Just Another Word For You

I couldn't agree with my fellow blogettes more. Home is definitely where the heart is.

My parents still live in the house I was raised in, and I have always loved it. I'm sure they'll move at some point, but when they do it will be extremely difficult for me, even though I'm a big girlfriday now.

I went on to live in my first dorm room, which was my own home, but not really. I loved the taste of independence. I loved coming and going as I pleased. I loved the friendships I made with people I didn't just see at school, but bonded with in my pajamas. But it wasn't home.

Then I moved to my first real apartment. It was the first home that was my own, but again, not really home. I felt like the ultimate single girl-- very Sex and the City. I was making my own money, budgeting, bringing home the bacon and frying it in the pan. I also lived with a great friend then, but it wasn't quite like coming home to family. It was more like living like an anonymous tax paying citizen, and it was what I was really craving. I liked to believe I had it all figured out, but I definitely still depended on my parents, big time.

Next I moved to an apartment in a far away state. Surely this one would finally be my home. I loved that place. My roommates and friends were great and my life looked exactly like I wanted it to. I was doing what I was passionate about and enjoying every minute. I also felt like I had finally found my city, I place where I wanted to put down roots. And yet still, it just wasn't my comfy place. I craved my real home.

I would go on to move around a lot. And as fun as it was to live in new places, I never thought of anywhere but my childhood house as my home.

But truthfully, that has all changed. As much as I still love visiting home, I don't feel totally comfortable, relaxed and happy if my husband is not there. I love that house and I'm extremely close to my immediate family; it's great to be there. But true contentedness does not come to me without him. I hate to sound schamltzy, but being around HubbyFriday brings me a peace that I have never had before. It doesn't matter if we are in dumpy motel off the interstate or on a beatiful island vacation or curled up on our couch. He will always be my home.

Pittsburgh

As the saying goes: Home is where the heart is.

…but my heart has never been in Pittsburgh.

I’ve lived in Pittsburgh for the past two years while my husband is getting his MBA. At first, I was excited to live in what has been titled “the most livable city”. I knew that Pittsburgh was trying to clean up its old Steel Mill image and it would be a fun adventure to live in a new city. However, no matter how hard I try, I just can’t love this city the way all the local Pittsburghers do. I really can’t ever say that I have thought of Pittsburgh as ‘home’.

Pittsburgh has some very interesting people who live here. Culturally it is blue-collar to its core. Since the dying age of the Steel Mills, Pittsburgh hasn’t had much to attract new, young people to the city. As a result, most of the people who live here (students excluded) were born and raised in Pittsburgh, their parents have grown up in Pittsburgh, and all their family is in Pittsburgh. There are very few people who permanently relocated to Pittsburgh intentionally, or for career-related purposes.

Then, there are the crazy Pittsburgh ‘quirks’! Which, I have to admit, I thought were absolutely crazy when I came here…but some have started to grow on me. For one thing, when you go to a restaurant and order a salad…they put French fries and melted cheese on the salad!!

Talk about losing the health appeal.

Then there is the famous Pittsburgh Primanti’s sandwich. This sandwich has the regular bread, meat and cheese…but then they continue to put the fries and coleslaw on the sandwich!

Finally…there is ‘Pittsburghese’ – an entire language of slang words and phrases that belong exclusively to Pittsburghers. Here are a few for example:

**Yinz – meaning: a group of people. i.e. ‘Are yinz going to the movie tonight?’ or ‘Do yinz guys know how to do that?’

**Red Up – meaning: to clean up. i.e. ‘We have guests coming tonight so we need to red up the house’

**N’at – meaning: shortcut way to say ‘and that’. i.e. ‘For breakfast I will this n’at.’

**Buggy – meaning: shopping cart. i.e. ‘Will you get the buggy for us to put our groceries in?’

**Chipped Chopped Ham – meaning: very thinly sliced ham. i.e. ‘Do you want a pound of chipped chopped ham or sliced ham?’

**Gumband – meaning: rubber band. i.e. ‘I will use a gumband to hold this paper together’
There are many, many more. But you get the idea.

And how can you talk about Pittsburgh and not think of the Steelers? This part I actually have really enjoyed while living in this city. I have never, ever been to a place that takes more pride in a team than Pittsburgh does. They live and die by the Steelers. I have an outside sales position. Every Monday morning we have a sales meeting with all the sales people. During football season the first 20 minutes of the meeting is to discuss the Steelers game that weekend. Both men and women know every single player, every play they made, the history of all the coaches, etc. On game day, everywhere you go is a sea of Black and Gold. It is actually a lot of fun. I was able to go to two Steelers games this season and both were incredibly exciting.

I will admit: Pittsburgh hasn’t been my favorite place to live. I don’t like that it takes me 30 minutes to get to a good gym, the winters are horrible, it rains more days here than Seattle, and I live in a small and cramped $500/month apartment. However, I have found some great friendships and created some wonderful memories over the past two years. Maybe the next place we re-locate to will feel more like ‘home’. And if not, that is ok. I have had fun in the process learning of the ‘quirks’ that this city has to offer.

Good at Being Uncomfortable

I never quite realized, until asked to write about it, just how little I think about this notion of home.

When I'm in the city and I'm getting ready to visit my family on Long Island, I say, "I'm getting ready to go home." When it's Sunday morning on Long Island, my mother asks, "What time are you going home?"

Home is both.

In 1980 home was Miami, in a small apartment with a small backyard. Apparently, for a short time around 1984, we lived in North Carolina, but the details on that are fuzzy.

From 1985 until 1990, home was Middle Village, Queens. In 1990 we moved to the Hamptons. From 1998 until 2002, home was: the dorm on 5th Ave and 10th street, the dorm at Union Square, the NYU property at Via Pompeo Neri in Firenze, and the dorm on Broome Street and Centre.

In 2002 I moved into the smallest apartment ever built in the West Village; a year later I moved to a beautiful apartment in the financial district of Manhattan; two years later I moved back to Long Island (I moved back home); in 2005 I moved to another small apartment in Morningside Heights, but only lasted there a month; I moved into my friend's unbelievable apartment for a few months right smack on Central Park, across from Tavern on the Green; then I moved into my most recent home on the Upper West Side. I've been there- three years and counting.

I don't watch those fixer-upper shows-- those shows on TLC where they flip a house, or where they design on a dime. I don't buy magazines with centerpieces on the cover. (Unless the centerpiece is made of cookies). I don't like looking at paint swatches or carpet panels. I don't like thinking about color combinations for living room walls and crown moldings.

When I was younger I asked every female adult I could-- what's the deal with the white picket fence? Women always talked about it on TV and I never understood. But I didn't get it. Maybe because I never had a white picket fence. Not that I'm complaining... I'm not. I'm an adult and still don't miss the white picket fence.

I went through a phase where I decided my white-picket-fence was going to be a claw-toed porcelain tub. But then I used one and frankly something about getting naked in an antique feels a little...germy.

Another while, I mildly obsessed over my future home having a "meditation room" with a clear view of the ocean in a big bay window. But my yoga phase ended and I realized-- I don't even like to meditate, anyway- I might have ADD.

There was a time when I thought-- linen closet. ...Linen closet. With neatly stacked, fluffly, color coordinated towels-- sage and rose-- that smells of cedar and lavendar... and then I admitted that to some boy and a few, drunken nights later he got all goggley-eyed and said, "Someday I'm going to make sure you have the linen closet that makes you so happy." And I was like, "What ew gross."

I went to my very good friend's beautiful wedding on the island of St. John and I spoke to the wedding florist-- a woman who spends her summers in New York and her winters in St. John. It seems to me the most perfect arrangement. I wouldn't need much. I'd even settle for a partial view of the ocean from my room- or at least close enough to walk to the beach. I'd really only need a computer and an internet connection. Then I'd get my dose of high-octane, steel and dust, whenever I was living in the city.

I could live with that. I could call that home.

The truth is, I spend all my time thinking about "job." Not "home." What will my career look like when I'm big enough to make decisions about my life (I assume I am not big enough now to make such decisions). What my job will look like, will design my home. If I'm traveling, my home will be simple, stable. If I'm sedentery (oh please God no), my home will be six months here, six months there. If I can help it.

And it's ok, because I'm good at being uncomfortable.

Lights will guide you. . .

Home. Home is more than simply a place or a building or where you rest your head—Home is a drive through the rolling hills of middle-America; past orchards and cow fields; through forests and over rushing creeks and streams. Home is nestled just off a cul-de-sac at the bottom of a hill; tucked against an open expanse populated by daydreams, bobsled runs, and tadpoles. Home is the steps up to the attic from my childhood bedroom closet, and the way I could waste countless hours hidden there, alone with my imagination. Home is the smell of chili cooking in the kitchen, fires in the fireplace, and football on the television. And home is enjoying that chili after a long day of hiking in the woods.

Home is the feeling you get when you’re in the last fifteen minutes of your four hour drive to see your long-distance boyfriend. Home is the smell of exhaust on the bridge as you wait to enter the city you long to be in. Home is the way the sun glistens on the fall leaves rushing past your car, catching the light of a sunbeam as your little car tugs its way up the familiar back road into the city. Home is a large parallel parking space waiting for you, and the soft tapping of a fingertip on your car window before you’ve even had time to turn off the car and gather your things.

Home is the awkward sqwauk of a heron taking flight from the end of the dock and the complete silence you hear when you try to fall asleep. Home is the morning sun cascading through the kitchen, blinding you as it bounces off deep blue granite. Home is the feel of cool cherry hardwood floors on barefeet in August, and the dust on the porch in the pollen-filled spring. Home is the cackle of teenagers being pulled on a tube past your house, and the quiet slap of a kayaker’s oar on the water. Home is watching the sun settle in behind the clouds while trolling the boat around the last corner of the lake, and trying not to speak while my father guides the boat on to the lift just past dusk.

Home is a living room filled with laughter of a family engaged in a marathon of board games, and home is a stocked refrigerator, full pantry, and open bar. Home is the dog rushing out of the door to great you when you arrive, and home my father’s knowing eyes watching through the window as I pull away to leave again. Home is the way your heart warms when surrounded by loved ones, and the way your heart hurts when you are away.

You Can Spell Transient: D-I-V-O-R-C-E

My Home is not so much a place, but more like a group of people. When I was 10 the parents divorced and the custody arrangement was as follows: every other day. Yep. I switched houses each and every day for the next 8 years of my life. And even when I came back from college that’s what I did until MommaMonday moved to DC (then she lost out). Going back and forth wasn’t always the easiest. I had two workaholic parents who were never happy when I remembered my soccer equipment was at the other’s house….on the way to practice. I never had the right clothes to fit my mood, I was constantly forgetting my contact lens case and cleaners, and the parents were forever rearranging the schedule so often that I was chronically forgotten somewhere. Trust me, that was very hard on a 12 year-old who was already a bit overanxious and a worrier.

But I got by. And I couldn’t have thought of a more perfect arrangement. I got to see them both equally. Which was good because they are two of my absolute most favorite people on Earth. DaddyMonday is one of those sweet, kind hearts who would give his left arm if someone wanted to borrow it for the day. And MommaM is as no-nonsense as they come. And a laugh a minute. I tell people we have the same quirky, weird sense of humor, but really she’s a lot funnier than I am. She’s funny, I’m just quirky and weird. So it didn’t matter that my body and my stuff (but never everything that I needed) didn’t have a permanent “home.” My home was wherever they were.

When I went to college my home was with David. I went wherever he went, he went wherever I went. He is one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met, and I’m eternally sorry that we aren’t close anymore. Dave had this remarkable way of taking the most mundane activities and turning them into something special, something that I remember almost 10 years later. We spent many, many nights in the Physics lab having stapler gun wars and quizzing each other on quantum theory over late-night T-Bell. He was the one who introduced me to the rest of my college home of Beth, Zack, Willie, DeeJ, Waldo, T-Monk, and Pills (if it sounds like a group of characters, trust me, it was). Whenever I think about any of those people, I am always home.

My life was, is, and will always be, full of Jeffs. I met my first Jeff in May of 1999 while working in DC for the summer. He calls me Peanut. Why, I’ll never know, but perhaps one could infer….Anyway, I call him Sunshine. He is the sunniest, most light-hearted person I know. Yet, he still retains this air of cynicism. I love it! He taught me all figuring out who I am, and the more practical matter of how to sweet-talk the cafeteria ladies at the Lab into free stuff. He was there for me through the trauma of 9/11 and life in the big city. He’s one of the few people who knows me well enough to know what special place the Rolla has in my life and even sent a sympathy card when she passed. Now, that’ll make anyone feel at home.

In between the Jeffs is a Michael. For those of you who know me, you know what a struggle this friendship has been to maintain over the last 18 months. Michael was the quintessential best friend, from 2002 when we met, to sometime around early fall of 2007 when he just stopped talking to me. We all have our theories on why, and I won’t get into those here, just suffice to say I’m still heartbroken over it. I have probably close to 50 postcards that decorate both my fridge and my desk at work from Michael. He travels all over the world and never forgets to send me something. It’s so nice to be thought of in Greenland, and Taiwan, and Peru, and Clemson, South Carolina. Yea Michael! Michael was not only an outlet for my travel passion (which he shared, but to an even greater extent) but someone who could match (and even surpass) me intellectually. When we met, this was something that had been missing in my life for a long time. We have never lived in the same place but always made time to see each other, even when it included flying into Syracuse in the middle of a blizzard the day after Thanksgiving or sprinting, in flip flops, through the Chicago airport so I would make my flight and therefore make his graduation. I can still remember riding up along the Pacific Coast highway at sunset, the two of us pointing out contrails to each other and trying to decide if we should stop and see the Hearst Castle. Ahhhh….when I think about it now it takes me home. I am so sorry you are mad at me Michael, I miss you more than almost anything in the world.

The second and third of my Jeffs arrived in 2003. And with them they brought a GirlFriday and a LeeCee into my home. I am never down with these four around me (and the stove is never off, the water is always running, there is, indeed, underwear on the front lawn, the cans and bottles are always recycled, there is glitter everywhere, the birthday is a week! long, and the beach house is never empty). These four have brought me the greatest joy of my life. I have never laughed so much, been comforted so many times, and felt overwhelmingly loved. It pains me each day to be away from them, and I would give almost anything to play foosball, DDR, or beer pong one last time. Even if it only involved pink lemonade. I might even sleep in a tent and sprint at the sound of a whistle if that’s what they wanted me to do. Who knows who I might run into coming back……

So when I think about home, it isn’t here, it’s over the mountain, it’s up on the beltway, it’s down in the sun of south Flordia, across the bridges of San Francisco, and off of St. Charles in the Bayou.

Excuse me, I gotta go. I’ve got to call home.