The Isolation Journals - Day 48, Redux

Coming in hot with the real prompt, from writer Judith Hannan,

Prompt:  Write about a time when you felt a shift in your relationship to your home. This could be your present home, your childhood home, or a temporary shelter. Think not only about the physical structure but the people there with you, or those who are not. Was there an event that led to this shift, like a major life change or extended time away? How do you feel about home now? Are there any revisions you’d like to make to how you define home?

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What is home?  Is it a place, an idea?  Is it where you get your mail, where you keep your stuff, or who is there with you?  What if you have a PO box, a storage unit, and terrible roommates?  What then?  Does the definition change?  Does home change?  Was Thomas Wolfe full of crap?  Can you go home again?

For most of my life, home was my grandmother's house.  It was Mom, Grandmom, Boomer, and me.  It was New Jersey.  I started college in 2003, and pausing to enumerate all the transitions in my domicile since then will make your head spin.  Two different universities, 6 or 7 different dorms or apartments, a summer spent working down the shore, a couple others making up credits and working in the library on campus.  

After graduation, I moved back "home" for a few short months, until my mom moved.  Just a few minutes down the road, but I (and all my stuff) moved with her.  Home.  Is it Mom, Linus, and me this time?  New house, new dog, and what about Grandmom?  Can more than one place be home?

A few months later, I moved out.  It was a rash decision at the time, moving in with a new boyfriend, but I think our twelve year relationship going on ten year marriage puts to bed the grotesque hypothetical, "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?"  Since that first apartment, if you were to plot all our moves on a map with push pins and red string, you'd have yourself a murder wall.  New Jersey -> Idaho -> New Jersey -> Utah -> different house in Utah -> South Carolina -> different house in South Carolina -> Nashville.  

For those of you keeping score, that's 8 different addresses and 4 cross-country moves.  Now, whenever I live in a place for longer than 6 months, I don't get a notice from USPS about my mail forwarding service ending, I get a knock from the police.  "Hello, ma'am, the Postmaster General sent us out to do a wellness check, it's been a while since you requested an address change and they're worried you might be dead."

Throughout all that, "home" was relative.  Home with a capital H was always New Jersey.  Mom.  Grandmom.  Home with a lowercase h was where Andy and I woke up every day and went to work, where we returned after vacations and unpacked our suitcases.  But Home, the proper noun, grew and expanded - it came to be Andy and Ajax and me.  Then also Hadley, then Charlie.  Home was either, or both.  But now Ajax is gone, and my mom and stepdad are leaving New Jersey, and these new changes have thrown my definition of home into another state of flux.  In another twist, Mom and Chuck are moving to South Carolina.  A place that, when I left, I swear I heard whisper, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out...bless your heart."  And the feeling was mutual.  And yet, here we are.  

So, what is home, you ask.  I'll answer that with a question.  How much time do you have?

My mom sent me this drawing from college today while she was packing.  It's home?