Ouch. Writing muscles creaky. Pared it way down, ran way over anyway. Not terribly fond of it, but if I don't start somewhere I'll never start writing again at all. Home.

The summer house used to sit alone at the edge of the Keys in a wilderness of weeds and wildflowers and grasshoppers snapping up into your face all summer long, glittering snowdrifts all winter: a ten-minute bike ride into town. Now it’s boxed in by condos, a 25-minute drive from the woods.

Even so hemmed in, the grasshoppers snap up all summer; the snow glares you blind all winter. Inside are Disney books and ragtime records, decades-old menus and birthday cards, a college portrait of the flowerchild who became my mournful Christian aunt, a Little Mermaid from Copenhagen. Outside are the plants at the waterline, thriving on Mem’s ashes. Outside is where Jack’s ashes will soon join hers.

No one lives here. We all live here.

Oh JZ, how beautiful.

Steph, have you read our stuff so far? Yea, but the definition of maudlin is inherent in the topic. It's a place we all long for, but can't go back to. Yet, we all have one whether we admit it or not. One thing moving around so much with the military taught me (and this may only be true for me) is that home is wherever I am. Like a turtle shell, I carry it with me.

...home is wherever I am. Like a turtle shell, I carry it with me.

I missed Steph's post, but you're not the only one to feel that way, Sail. My family wasn't military, but I lived in twelve different locations before I left to go to college at 18, and I've lived in six others since.

you're not the only one to feel that way, Sail. My family wasn't military, but I lived in twelve different locations before I left to go to college at 18, and I've lived in six others since.

I think it's a trick that people who move around a lot learn in self-defense. There is a tendency to want to put down roots and when you can't, you learn how to emulate an epiphyte with roots that can live in the air instead of the soil. Makes home easily transportable.

I have to say it. I can't help myself: "His eyes slid down the front of her dress."

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

It's not just people who've moved a lot, guys. Except for fewer than five years, I've lived in the same house in the same town, and it doesn't feel like home to me, it feels like a trap.

Home is where I want it to be, if it's an RV for a couple of years, or a tiny apartment in a small city. Wherever my heart decides, that'll be home to me.

His eyes slid down the front of her dress.

"That's beautiful. Or taken literally, incredibly gross."

Vision of eyes falling out and slithering away on their own...

I missed Teppy's post, but I'm likely to be the exception. There's an angry pissy self-indulgent little thing about Erica Road taking shape in my head. It won't get written tonight, though.

I like JZ's. First sentence is a nice long convoluted sentence that worked the way they're supposed to work. It made me quite happy.

It's not just people who've moved a lot, guys. Except for fewer than five years, I've lived in the same house in the same town, and it doesn't feel like home to me, it feels like a trap.

I sympathize. I think this is where there has to be a number of different definitions of home. Home can be used to define the house you live in, the community you live in, the society you live in. You don't necessarily have to feel "at home" in all three (and you may have more definitions of home than that, it's a vaguely amorphous thing--home.) There's times I feel at home in only one of those at any one time. After the last election, I didn't feel like my society was "home" to me anymore. The feeling's starting to come back, but it was alienated for a while. Madison feels like home right now. Mainly because it's where most of my family is. That's not to say that feeling isn't like a pair of shoes that have worn down at the heels and make my feet hurt, but they're still a favorite pair that I'm loath to throw out because I walked so far in them and became who I am because of them. I keep them around out of nostalgia. Some day, I'll throw them out, probably the next time I move. My condo only vaguely feels like home. I've lived in "apartment" settings for so long, that it's hard to treat this place as permanent and allow myself to become attached to it. It'll probably only start to feel like home when I'm about to sell it. My family only felt like home to me as long as my mother was alive, she was our center, our soil. I feel like the family is withering on the vine, now. It's one of the reasons I've chosen to stay around Madison despite the fact the shoes aren't comfortable any more, I want to see if the soles can be replaced. I'm working on it.