Day 9

Day 9...

It's Friday night, and I don't have to get up early tomorrow. Does that mean I'll be slacking and not have a big lesson to start your day? Nope. We began a discussion about how your answers to basic questions can change over your lifetime. Let's dig into that more.

From yesterday's quote from Illusions: Where is your home? 

Home. Usually we think that's where we currently live, with our family and our "stuff" that makes us happy. Sometimes home is where you grew up, if you still have connections there. Or even just fond memories.


I spent some of my best times in Southeastern PA, with my dad's parents. I feel a strong connection there to this day, despite my laziness in visiting the family and friends I have in the area.

I remember arriving at my Gramma Sweitzer's for the annual Fourth of July week vacation and immediately heading for her cherry tree. She kept the ladder there just for me, knowing it'd be the first place I went. Straight up the ladder, for those delicious fruits that had just started to ripen that week.

I remember standing in the upstairs bathroom at my Gramma Tut's: an old railroad station house, Sells Station in Littlestown. So close to the tracks when the train went by and you were in that bathroom you could feel the room shake. Grampa George was a brilliant self-made man, but he lost TWO garages to the sparks from the coal fires from the tracks. Then there were the miniature partridges he was going to raise and serve in his restaurant The Trotting Inn. Nah, they weren't the prolific breeders he was promised, so I had lots of little pets when I went to visit.

I remember going to Aunt Rosemary and Uncle Sonny's house: another railroad station house, Starner's Station in Gardners. My kitchen today is decorated like hers that I loved so well, with apples. She worked for Musselman's, so she sorta liked apples. We just lost him recently, after a long and happy 83 years. I remember his laugh. He laughed a lot.

As I got older, I had the occasion to go to Harrisburg on business. Made lots of friends in that area, even though we aren't in the same industry now I still count them as close friends. Then there were the race friends, fellow Jimmy Spencer fans strewn from Biglerville to Selinsgrove to Mount Pocono.
I lost one of those good friends recently as well, a wonderful man who is very much missed by the humans and the animals he left behind.

Crap. Now I'm sad. Maybe those memories of home aren't as great as I thought.

Nah, they are. Anywhere you go, everywhere you live, there will be good and sad memories.

I grew up on Lake Norman, here in NC. Lots of good times during high school, family times, Nascar memories. I really didn't mind not living there anymore after we moved to Lexington in 2006. It felt.... incomplete. Without Kathie, and Mike had been away in the Navy, it just didn't feel.... right.

Having moved to be closer to work, I didn't really know many people here. Being kinda homebodies for many reasons, just the circle of work friends was all I had. We had fun times: a hilarious Halloween haunted trail, Karaoke and pool at a redneck bar that was so redneck the smoking area out back was called the Chicken Coop since they had to close it in with chicken wire so people couldn't take drinks off-premises, sparklers in the parking lot at a club in Clemmons on New Years Eve, sushi with Miss Joanie.

This is home now. For now it's just me, the critters, and the woods. Well, and you people on the interwebs. I feel.... grounded here. Safe. Yes, even with the dang rogue possum passing through. Got my garden, my pets, my hobbies, my work, all right here in a ten mile radius.

Three states, more than a few residences. People in and out of my life. Events happening and changing things in the blink of an eye. Good thing I found a place to call home.

Lesson Nine: Think about your "home." Does your childhood home bring back fond memories? How about your first place as an adult, your first real "home" of your own? Do you have someplace special that just feels "right"? Where do you call "home?"

721 days left...