H is for...

...home. Home - is where the...hearth is.

Ex-pats, for such a one am I, often speak of "Home". They mean elsewhere, that place from which they are "ex-".

I don't think that way, and - I suppose - I am not alone in this. But, for me, "Home" has most often been where I am.

Dublin, surely. I was born there and did a lot of my growing up there. It remains an on-going process, the "growing up", though I suppose you could say the same of Dublin. Cities, when healthy, continue growing up - even if they have been regarded a "city" for over a thousand years.

Connecticut, USA (as if there were another elsewhere). I spent a year there between 1975 and 1976 - and grew very fond of this country and its population. And it was "Home".

Salamanca, España.¡Cómo no! Great, great fondness and memories of my year there.

Sauverny, France. Two years there, just across the border from Geneva. I have good memories of home there. And a friendship that has survived distance - both of time and space.

I spent time in England, and - though I have deep friendships there - it was just for work, with my home elsewhere. It never seemed like "Home".

Cupertino, Santa Clara and Foster City - all in California. Oh, I am "Home". Of this, there is no doubt.

And now, and now...

The heartland calls, this boy from an island, who lives by the Pacific Ocean, right beside a lake/lagoon filled with salt water, is planning to move to the middle of a continent.

"Itchy feet", my Mother used to call it. (And it had nothing to do with athlete's foot - Momma didn't raise no athlete, at least not in me.)

So, once I perfect my thousand-yard stare and get used to a big sky above me I may well be found by the banks of the Missouri river (I know that gives me a lot of latitude to work with, but I hate being tied down!)

So, in the end, Home may well be where the hearth-land is.