What is home?

What is a home?
A city? A place? A person? A feeling?

I have often wondered about this question trying to find an answer. I have searched for the meaning of 'home' as I moved across state and national borders, as I shared my space and lived alone, as I traveled and as I came back home. Home has been an evolving concept... always present and yet just out of reach of definition. 

Below is a song by Teitur, an artist from Faroe Islands on the subject of home... Listening to this song brought back that question all over again....

"Home is the sound of birds early in the morning
Home is a song I've always remembered
Home is the memory of my first day in school
Home is the books that I carry around
Home is an alley in a faraway town
Home is the places I’ve been and where I’d like to go
Home
I'm always gonna feel at home
No matter where I may roam
I'm always gonna find my way back home
No matter how far I’m gone
I’m always gonna feel this longing
No matter where I might stay
Home is a feather twirling in the air

Home is flowers in a windowsill
Home is all the things she said to me
Home is a photo I never threw away
Home is the smile on my face when I die
Home is the taste of an apple pie
I met a woman, she always lived in the same place
And she said home is where you’re born and raised
And I met a man, he sat looking out to the seaAnd he said home is where you want to be
I met a girl in some downtown bar
And she said I'll have whatever he's having
And I asked her how come we never met before?
And she said all my life I’ve been trying
to get a place of my ownI’m always gonna feel at home
No matter where I may roam
Always gonna find my way back home
No matter how far I’m gone
I'm always gonna feel this longing
No matter where I might stay"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As someone who has moved around a decent bit - cities, places, buildings, houses have all felt like home at one time or another. But with time, the identity of a home has evolved into something more amorphous.

I realize now that 'home' for me was always about people. I felt at home when I found my people - be it in the middle of a book, an airport, a school or even at home. I have felt like an outsider in my own home at times; and I have felt comfortably at home in somebody else's kitchen. Its just a feeling - sometimes evoked by people, memories and visions of a time gone-by.

There are not many people who become a 'home' for me but thankfully there are a few...

In their tight embrace, with their lingering warmth and their comfort - they take me home.

They feel like home even though I haven't had too long to be familiar with the embrace. When I look back, we probably didn't fit in as well with our heads bumping and arms reaching... With time, we just fit better and better each time. With each embrace, I left a little bit of me left behind and I took a little bit of you. As we grew from strangers, to acquaintances, to friends - that comfort and feeling of home has stayed with me.
The embrace has been just as reassuring, just as comforting - right from that awkward first time.
In their arms, it was and still is like finding home. There is a sense of familiarity, of acceptance and even surrender. A sense of old camaraderie, a certain acceptance of the chipped paints and broken windows. I come to these embraces with that sense of acceptance. Its not perfect and I am not perfect.. but its perfect for me.
I miss those hugs that held me together in times when all I wanted was to fall apart.

That is home, I guess... a familiar place that comforts, protects and keeps you together.