Feels Like Home to Me

"You know that point in your life when
you realize the house you grew up in...
isn't really your home anymore.
All of a sudden, even though you have
some place where you put your shit...
that idea of home is gone.
Just sorta happens one day, and it's gone.
You feel like you
can never get it back.
It's like you feel homesick
for a place that doesn't even exist.
Maybe it's like
this rite of passage, you know?
You won't ever have that feeling again until
you create a new idea of home for yourself.
You know, for...for your kids.
For the family you start.
It's like a cycle or something.
I don't know. But I miss
the idea of it, you know?
Maybe that's all
family really is.

A group of people that miss
the same imaginary place."

So I was watching Garden State the other night and I don't know what it is about that movie that resonates so profoundly in me, but its something, and perhaps maybe it's this...perhaps it is in trying to define what home is. Trying to find your place in the world and letting go. Ever since I moved to Kentucky in 1994, I have struggled to define where my "home" truly is. In conversation I still refer to my sweet Columbus as home. But when I drive home at the end of everyday, it isn't to a Hobbit house in the 43214 zip code. It used to drive the husband-formerly-known-as-mine crazy. He would say "this is your home." But during those years, I never felt that it was. I always longed to be some place 200-miles away. I never felt home.

I still drive North on I-75 with the same anticipation, the same welled up feeling in my gut...that same feeling of familiarity. Home to me is familiar. Home is family. (The irony is that those words are only one letter short of being the same). What I still really love about Columbus is that my family is there. Or most all of them anyway. Every once in awhile when I am within the city limits, I will close my eyes and remember those years past when I too, lived there. I remember the people, places, family, who all left their mark--who shaped me into the person I would become. I recall all the memories that are now emblazened into me. Each time I cross over the Franklin county line, it's like putting on my favorite sweater. It's the illusion of the past. It's the safety and security of being close to people who just love you because you are their's. There aren't many things in life that make you feel that way.

In the years since my leaving, My Sweet Columbus and I have both continued to move on and grow, inevitably, without each other. We've both gotten bigger. We've both welcomed new people in our lives. We've both loved those within our arms reach. We've both said goodbye to those we tried to hold tight. And yet that familiar feeling holds her to me as strong as ever...she is always calling me back.

My struggle for home lies simply in that stretch of highway that brings me to her and leads me away from her.

Now, the same sense of familiarity washes over me when I cross the Scott county line. Leading me back, to this home. My heart has bound me to the new familiar. To Lexington. To the blue sky and rolling bluegrass. To the new tradition of blue & white vs. scarlet & gray. Here to the call to post at Keeneland each April & October (what is it about Keeneland!) Back to the friends who have become a family to me over the years and to those friends whom I have yet to meet. Right back to this quirky little city, trying to make its mark, struggling to hold on to the illusion of the Old South (yet really only 60-miles from those Northerners they'd like to keep out). Back home, to the city whose traffic problems rival those of L.A. or NYC. Right back to that place that so lovingly has drawn me in, who has said "stay."

Back to the arms of this new old place that just seems, well...familiar.