Home is Relative

Abandoned farmhouses speckle the countryside amid weathered, tattered barns. In every state were cornfields, so many cornfields I began to wonder where all the wheat had gone. Rolling hills of prairie grasses gave way to thunderous traffic and heavily wooded forests succumbed to city streets smatterred with busy people. Purple flowers pushed through concrete, children rode bicycles and vegetable stands dotted the roadsides.

Rivers flowed gently, creeks had run dry, doors stood open in the summer sun, the moon rolled overhead and we continued. Another road, another bend, another town, another bed, more people. Everywhere we went, more and more people, all different and all the same.

One motel is like the other, varying in degrees of comfort and cleanliness. White sheets, white towels, and bar soap. Connecting to WiFi becomes more essential than clean clothing. There will be a laundry room at the next place. But Internet is crucial; my only link to the real world. But isn't this the real world? How could something so spectacular and beautiful, awe inspiring and frightening be real?

A world without mail, neighbors, commitments or schedules cannot be real. To declare homelessness is to declare utter failure to humanity. No one chooses such failure, do they? To languish in the chaos of uncertainty, to linger here or there and roam about aimlessly must be insanity.

"Where do you live?"

"On my motorcycle."

"But where do you call home?"

"America."

The wet, green alfalfa pastures of Arizona are my home. The filthy, bustling streets of Memphis are my home. The winding roads of Pennsylvania are my home. The blazing yellow grasslands of Nebraska, the narrow, potholed lanes of New Jersey, the sprawling open lands of Oklahoma, the Pig Trails of Arkansas, the bar strewn streets of San Diego are all my home.

My home is all of my journey, all if the stories, all of my days and nights mixed with yesterday's memories. All of the food and photographs, the tears and laughter, the arguments and kisses, the smiles, the waves, the miles, the dotted, yellow lines; all of this is home. For a moment I stood in a lighthouse and it was where I belonged. For an hour I listened to bluegrass on a Knoxville sidewalk and my soul sang along. For an evening I strolled the boardwalk with my husband, stealing kisses, laughing like children, completely alone with one another on the Maryland beach.

I'm at home in my own skin, at peace with my own soul, alive in America.

Whether I am standing beside you, on top of a bluff overlooking the land, or listening to my wheels chew up asphalt, I am home.