Where is "Home"

Google has a built-in searchable dictionary. Ok so it isn't their dictionary, but seemingly everyone else's dictionary they'll search for you. I find it quite handy to get a wide variety of perspectives on a word. To use it, simply put "define:" (without quotes) in front of a search term to get a definition. My search history using "define:" contains a real mishmash of terms including "define: hermaneutically", "define: sandwich", "define: sport", "define: teleology", and tonite, "define: home". Yes, "sandwich" and "sport" are really in the list. Haven't you ever had a deep discussion whose resolution can best be found through an appeal to authority? ah, but I digress...

What is home to you?

I can be on a business trip and head "home" to the hotel room. I can go "home" from work. I can go "home" to my hometown and return "home" again to my current residence. It clearly isn't a fixed place.

Thanks to mom-in-law, tonite was a "Date night", (perhaps one of the last for several months, more on that topic *real soon now*, I hope) -- anyway, a chance to be ourselves, a chance to be away from the frenetic pace of mundane shopping trips that all too often seem to have become a family outing. After dinner we enjoyed a steaming hot beverage next to a fireplace (ooh, a fireplace on a cold winter evening!), and concluded by driving a couple areas of town looking at holiday lights before going home. Well, not "Home", but "home". You see, we found "Home" while we were out of the house, eating dinner, shivering our way along the street, and expressing conflicting viewpoints about the admirable qualities of the various lighting and other holiday decorations.

"Home" for me has never been a place, but instead is an emotional state of mind; one of comfort, satisfaction, and (usually) peace. It is right beside that place on the couch where my son leans against me to watch TV.

This morning, on my way out the door, my wife asked 3 or 4 questions, all of which I started to answer at the same exact time as she started to ask the question. These weren't all the same questions of every day, but there was still a comfortable predictability about them. Maybe I'm psychic, maybe being together over 17 years I just know instinctively what she'll ask, maybe she gave me a list of them earlier to memorize and then I forgot memorizing them. Maybe I'm just "Home."

Where ever it might be, may each of you find yourself "Home" for the holidays.

rootie