Homecomings

Once upon a time, when I left home for college, I swore I would return to my hometown once I had completed my four years of study. I thought I would be terribly homesick, going from the rural outskirts of a small town to the big city. And as it turns out, there was some homesickness for open spaces, for trees, for familiar family and friends. But I also began to find things to love about the city as well: the mingling of cultures, the architecture, the art, the music readily available in concert halls and elsewhere, the sociology studies just waiting to happen on a bus, and the small places to call my own when I needed solitude. In that city, at that school, I found another home, and there too I found connections with people who became dear to me.
There came a time near the end of my senior year when, due to my course of study, I could no longer sing with the Concert Choir. I needed a place to sing so that I wouldn’t burst with pent up musicality and frustration, and one of my dearest professors noticed this and invited me to sing with the church choir he directed. This was a welcome relief, and with Lent and Easter season in full swing, I was put to good use singing for the services. Later, I continued to attend that church on the Sundays I sang with the choir, and on the other Sundays I walked to the church on campus, where I felt I got more out of the sermons. I felt that both churches were home, but for different reasons. Just as the city was home, but in a different way than the home where I grew up.
Now I live in a semi-rural community again, and work in a small town –smaller than where I grew up, even. This too has become home, with its places I enjoy, the people I know, the church I belong to, and a purpose for being here.
So I find myself wondering, what makes a place home? And which home will ultimately be the one I return to for good? Or will I always be moving on, changing homes as I move through different seasons of life?
What makes a place home, I think, is its physical and emotional attachments, its sentimental value, and the amount of life invested there. Physically, is it a place in the natural world that I have some attachment to, and have I decorated, gardened, and furnished the dwelling in a way that makes me glad to return to it? Emotionally, do I have connections with people in the area: have I had conversations on the porch, had folks over for dinner, found places to go for social interaction, found a church, etc.? Sentimentally, are there significant memories that have been collected during my stay here, that give the place a magnetism that has nothing to do with the condition of the structure or its aesthetic appeal? And similarly, how many years of my life have been rooted in this place, how much of my identity was formed here, who are the people who have brought fullness to my life?
As for the remaining two questions, only God knows the answer. But I do know that the true friendships and family connections will stay with me no matter where I go, for those connections span time and distance easily. So too will the memories of the physical places I have called home be carried in my heart, and will travel with me to each new place I call home.