On Becoming Homeless

The automatic Gaussian filter of the mind is taking over as we move closer to becoming homeless. There is a sense of sunset about it, yet there is a new chapter emerging, still formless, still the ever recurring blank canvass of tomorrow or the next day. It is both intimidating and enticing. Fifty-seven years in the making; homeless without the fear that there will never be home again. Home has become, I guess, wherever we go now, and we go a lot of places. This is the next adventure becoming complete.

It's been a good house for twenty-one and a half years. Not huge, but big enough to raise four kids and still have a room or two where you could go and hide for a while. The kids could all walk to school (and for Baily and Max, from kindergarten though 12th grade). It was a great place to raise children, and now that's going to happen again: the new owners have a four-year-old and a two-year-old, and that makes me smile. We really haven't lived there for almost three years, Beth closer to four years. But, in the end, it's a just a house, not really home anymore. We figured out that we spent about 23-24 days there last year, and that works out to be a pretty expensive dollars-to-days-used place to live. So, we move on.

If not New Philadelphia, where then does that make home these days? Maybe sitting on the deck of a house on Sugden Lake, or watching the Tigers play on TV while we play in a great kitchen in Kalamazoo, MI, or playing with our grand-children in New Philadelphia or Reynoldsburg, Ohio, or roughing it in Florida in February, or it might be at a wedding or two near Charlotte, NC. Or, it could just be a few days with some friends or family members who have told us to make sure we stop by and stay when we get through the area (you know who you are, so be prepared in case we call to invade). Hey, we actually live in a truck, so we're comfortable in a lot of places these days. I guess maybe for us anyway, home is where we park our truck.

On that thought, perhaps some day we'll get to park overnight again at a rest area near the city of Weed in Northern California, and watch the sun rise over a cloud-shrouded Mount Shasta, and for a few hours we'll feel right at home right there, too.