Home is Where the Heart is

Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. 

As a kid I could not get away from my home town fast enough. If I had the speed of Road Runner, it would not have been adequately quick.

As an adult? I find myself going back there often.

I am blessed that I have family there. As well as amazing friends, that make it home and much more enjoyable to go back and not just visit, but also vacation.

It is more then that though. There is something about that small town feel. Of people knowing you since you were a child. Knowing the good as well as the bad. It is the picturesque community with Mount Washington in the foreground, that I have come to be grateful for in my old age.

Don’t get me wrong, I love New York. I will never ever get sick of the culture. It has its own network of communities and people knowing you. It is a city that prides itself on reinventing as well as being creative. The only downside is, I just am not a huge fan of all the people. What can I say? I am an anti social writer, it’s in my profession! Kidding aside, all the throngs of people, I could do without.

The peace and quiet I came to hate and even resent as a child, I now crave in the hecticness of adulthood. The escape to nature, all the comforts of my childhood home. The feel of being at ease and not at all paranoid.

I joke constantly about my RBF.

Yet there is something about stepping onto the plane at JFK where I can let that go and genuinely smile. I don’t have to worry about said smile being misconstrued as a come on. Or the crazy psychotic people on the subways, or pretend I am completely ignorant of the guy who keeps looking at the iPhone in my hand, like it is made of gold. Which it might be.

I am not mindless to the fact if I did move back to my home-town I would hate it. As much as I complain about the people, I do need them. Where else would I find the characters for my novels?

As people we need balance, and the White Mountains and New York City are as about as opposite as you would find.

The hecticness to balance out a slower pace. Throngs of people with just a handful. The chance to take time with ourselves and just be, to being in the thick of things being energized by other people.

They are both jungles of different kinds, one is nature filled and the other concrete.

For my wanderlust soul, it is perfect.