Good To Be Home

Are you like Dorothy Gale who, when she finally makes it back to Kansas vows, “I’m not gonna leave here ever, ever again…Oh, Auntie Em, there’s no place like home!”?

Or are you more like the roué in Johnny Mercer’s classic, Any Place I Hang My Hat is Home? (That’s a yummy Susannah McCorkle rendition.)

I think I’m somewhere in between; far from rootless certainly, but happy to carry a definition of home that’s got a little portability.

For example, these days, I don’t have too many chances to sit on the back porch at my mom’s house and shoot the breeze with my sisters and brother long into a summer evening. But there’s something about being there that I can take with me wherever I go.

That sense of home might lower my blood pressure in a tense situation at work. It might lift my spirits when I’m feeling discouraged or low on energy.

It’s right there on Wikipedia: “As an alternative to the definition of ‘home’ as a physical locale, home may be perceived to have no physical definition–instead, home may relate to a mental or emotional state of refuge or comfort.”

You can really Be Home no matter where you are.

What takes you home? What is there about home that you take with you always?