home is

 

Home is not what I thought it was when I first left it in August 2012. Since then I have lived in several places—some for a few days, some for months—and with each, my definition of home has been chiseled and carved and reshaped. I used to think that home was the dirt you’d walked on since childhood, the rooms of the same house and the smells of the same food. I used to think only one place could ever be home. But when I went back to my “one place” after a year away, I still felt… homesick.

Someone has said it before me, and many will learn it after me. Home is not a place; home is people. Home is when you know you can leave, be gone for days or weeks or months or years, and when you come back your place is still there among the people who love you, just as if you had never left. Not that people don’t change—they do. But somehow your relationships hold fast anyway.

I have multiple homes, and one of them is the Stern family in Martinsburg, Pennsylvania. :)