Home. I came home on Friday night, and from the moment I got off the plane in San Francisco that warm, wonderful wave of "rightness" washed over me, that feeling that I was HOME, safe, rooted, OK.
The whole concept of "home" is one I've thought about a lot over the past few years, particularly since I've been splitting my time between "home" in San Francisco and "spending time" in Madison. I use the two words on purpose, because it continues to intrigue me that in spite of my having apartments in both places, one feels like home, the other feels like shelter; one feels like me, the other feels like me hibernating.
Of course, the fact that I have my stuff in San Francisco is one component. But even more than that, I realize that the feeling of home for me has to do with anchors - those people, places, and things that make me feel like I know where I am. When I was vacillating about my separation and coming home to a husband I no longer wanted to live with, my house did not feel like home. That anchor of marriage had been uprooted, and all the familiar belongings in the world did not relieve me of the suffocating feeling at home.
It's different now. My home is smaller by half than when I was married. It largely contains much of the same art and objects, with the exception of my wonderful new bed and bedding(hmmm, wonder why I picked those objects to replace!), yet it is my sanctuary where I am as comfortable creating a feast for 10 as I am lolling on the couch with a friend for hours, as I did yesterday.
The anchor of friendships, of familiar places, of true connections seems to be at the heart of the feeling of "home", as does the energy of the community. While there are many places I have visited that I really enjoy (Madison, among them), the human energy of kindred spirits, some whom I know already, others out there waiting to be met, really seems to make the difference. I even dare to extend that "home" feeling to the experience of dating. In my "home" cities, I have met men with whom I have enough in common to feel those sparks of excitement and connection. In my "spending time" city, it's just been dinner at best.
My uncle once said "There is something about the angle of the light in the place where you were born that will always feel like home." Maybe not exactly your situation right now, but the same idea of the feeling of "rightness" about a particular place - the place of one's earliest memories, or places where significant life events happened. For me that is the tiny town of Marine on St. Croix in Minnesota (where I was born); Geneva, Switzerland (a coming-of-age place); the North shore of Lake Superior at Lutsen; and Amsterdam.
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