Home is where the love is

Earlier this month, I spent a beautiful week in the BWCA.  My home for those few nights was a tent, my bed was a sleeping bag, my family was the amazing and badass Courtney Jones.  Like nomads we packed up our home each morning, uncertain about our next destination, but finding freedom in the knowledge that the place didn’t matter.   I spent a lot of time during that trip thinking about the idea of home: where it is, what it is, how it becomes.

Is home a place?

Is home a person?

Is home where your heart is?

Is home where your bed is?

As someone who has moved a lot – both as a child and as an adult, I have called a lot of different places home.  But a home must be more than four walls, more than a plot of land.  A home must be made by what is contained within those walls, by the people who share it.

I have been lucky enough to call south Minneapolis home for the past couple of months.  I sold my condo in May, and my sister, Nicole, and brother-in-law, Ibraheem, graciously invited me and our younger sister, Justine, into their home.  We will forever remember this as the “summer of unemployment,” the “summer of transition,” and undoubtedly one of the best summers of our lives.  This house has felt more like home to me than the condo I have lived in for the past six years because it was filled with people I love and care about so much.  I loved getting up early with my little nephew and reading books quietly while the rest of the house sleeps.  I loved cooking and eating and laughing together.  I loved watching Nicole’s belly grow with a new life (a new little nephew I can’t wait to meet this winter!).  I loved walks around the lake, bike rides with Justine, the encouraging and positive attitudes of these beautiful people.

All of the things in this home got packed in suitcases and boxes.  Some of them Justine will drive over to St. Paul.  Some will be loaded on a truck and shipped out to Seattle.  And some will come with me on a plane in a couple of weeks to New Delhi.  As we all go our separate ways, I know we will carry this home with us.   It’s not the place that has made this home.  It is the love.