I'm Home.

In those flashes of moments between sleep and awake when my heart still remembers dreaming, but my mind is trying to rationalize the days events... this is where my memory of the physical place of home exists. My eyelids are not yet open and I can see with perfect clarity the view from my old window in my parents house. The driveway stretching out to the neighborhood road. The blue house across the street, and a mountain beyond that. I hear the birds, some of my favorites, singing me awake. And I am home. Home again in my childhood bed. My spirit feels like its nine year old self, and argues with my mind as I become conscious, reasoning with my spirit--reminding it that I'm twenty-six and in my apartment, and that I cannot actually hear the birds.

The physical place of home for me is of course my parents house. Their house has collected more memories of childhood than stars in the sky. Each room has a story. Adventures with my sister and brother, roller skating in the basement, made up games of dolls, Jason's ken doll phase (he wanted to be included), berry potions created with elements from the back yard, snow days, that winter in October where we cooked meals on the fire place, running around the driveway waiting for the school bus, ice skating on the carpet in the family room (the only place I would ever be able to do an axle), spending four hours on the cake for my sweet sixteen, prom pictures under the crabapple tree, and the list goes on. Whenever I drive home, my spirit sighs at each bend in the road as it realizes that I'm going home. It's funny how a place can do that to you.

Home is not just a physical place. Home is where the heart is. Many times it can be just a feeling. When I'm with the ones I love I feel home. Mostly I think the feeling of home comes from four different emotions: Love, Comfort, Safety, and Nostalgia. No matter where I am with my family, with Billy, with my closest friends, and with my dogs I get a sense of home. As I get older, this sense of home has moved further from the physical location of my house, and more toward the feeling and sensation in my soul.

Nothing has brought more clarity to me of this than animals. There is a stray cat that wanders my apartment complex. I'm not naturally a cat person, my dad is deathly allergic, so I've only ever grown up with dogs. This cat, however, is one of the most beautiful cats I've ever seen. She comes and cries at the bottom of my building for attention, she wants to be pet and scratched. She purrs as though she is getting divine spa treatment, and meows loudly when she sees me coming, a greeting I imagine. Homeless dogs and cats break my heart in a way that few things do. I created a little bed for it with a blanket in an old cardboard box, left a bowl of water and some cat food under the staircase of my building. It comes by to eat and drink although usually sleeps on the top of cars. I have attempted to get this cat to come into my home so that I can adopt it out and find it a forever home. It has caught on to my luring tricks to get it into one of my dog's carriers. It will even follow me all the way up the stairs to the front of my door, but never inside my apartment. I couldn't understand why it wouldn't want to come inside, so I could find it a home. It trusts me, lets me pet it, eats food from my hands, but never follows me inside. Then I realized that I was looking at it the wrong way. This cat has a home, maybe not a physical home, but home is where the heart is--and her heart is with me underneath the staircase of my building.