Where love abides

At what point does the definition of "home" change for the first time? It's a good icebreaker question, if one loaded with privilege. My trajectory, like that of many other people in my generation, was that I completed high school and went to college. I still called it "going home" when I returned to the house in which I'd been brought up. 

It wasn't until after I graduated and got my first newspaper job that paid (at least in theory) that I began to call "home" the crappy little garage apartment on the wrong side of the tracks. 

So how does the definition of "home" change when the household in which you abide is fluid? When the answer to "How long will you stay here?" is "As long as we can."* That's what I mean about privilege in the question.

And how does the definition of "home" change farther along the path of our lives? How does the definition of "home" change when, as my parents do, one lives in the house of 42 years' dwelling and one lives in a nearby facility for assisted living? Where is home then?

Recently, at the request of our fair city, I took a survey about housing accessibility and affordability. It reminded me again how privileged my own household is. 

In my adult life, since graduating undergraduate school, I've had twelve places I called home. Early in our marriage, I listed so many recent residences that the woman on the phone asked if I were in the military. But they were all voluntary moves, most of them job-related. And for the last 25 1/2 years, "home" has been wherever my husband and children are.

Now one of them is living elsewhere, and the definition of "home" has changed for my parents as well. Bottom line, I believe, is that home is where love abides. I'm sure I didn't originate that descriptive, but every one of the several places that I feel at home is a place where I love and am loved. 

*Blue Willow (1976). By Doris Gates. Puffin Books.