Home is many places

Being on vacation means having nothing to do. Not really, but I'm trying to fake it. Mostly.

Anyway, I guess I got a little carried away checking out GiggleChick, a young woman from the Jersey Shore who talks about Jersey (Belmar, fishing, the Parkway and Turnpike, yada yada), various silliness and the angst of a single woman — two out of three isn't bad. Along the way she pointed out this wonderfully silly holiday message.

Which brings me 'round to this...

Jeremy Zawodny wondered if his hometown would always feel more like home than where he lives now; yet he knows that things are changing. I believe that the feeling fades, but it never goes away. As you pile on the places, personal and professional milestones, homes, relationships, etc. you add to the situations and places where you feel comfortable for some reason or another. The more you've experienced, the easier it becomes to fit into a new [location, job, experience, home].

I left home many years ago and yet I still get homesick for New Jersey once a month or so. Outside of a couple months during the summer, no one is there any more. I'm at a loss to explain it; it just is. And every damned time I step outside by myself on the porch at the house in Bradley, my whole damned childhood starts flashing in front of my eyes. Every wave is a memory, as is just about everything else I see and hear (for instance, I just remembered swimming out to the Belmar marker buoy late one night to prove that we weren't afraid of Jaws — talk about stupid — the idea was to come back in via the Shark River).

Yet, we can never really go home. That idealized vision of home no longer exists; people move, change, marry, die and are born. Change happens. We can only go back and refresh those memories that make us who we are and make some new ones to puzzle ourselves with years from now.

C'est la vie!