As I write this, I am roughly 36,000 feet in the air. I’m somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, halfway between two homes—literally and figuratively. I’m headed home for a few weeks thanks to some pesky tourist visa term limits and a return ticket that would have cost an arm and a leg to change (plus I really want to snuggle with my cat again—a desire strong enough that I’ll tolerate the seven hour flight).

But I use the term “home” loosely. For the past three months, Maynooth, Ireland has been home. It’s where my husband still is. We’ve found comfort in our little apartment, in our tiny old town that spans no more than a few blocks, in our weekend excursions to beautiful sites and cities around the country. After three months, I’ve grown comfortable with our life there, and it’s been a bit sad for me to pack up and leave this place that I’m just beginning to love— and even more sad that once I do fly back, the end of our Irish residency will be looming just over the horizon.

In coming home to the US, I’m not actually going home. My physical home, my condo just outside Chicago, is still shuttered, powered-down and lifeless. I won’t yet get to return to my amazing pillow top mattress, my favorite Henckel knives, picking up Venezuelan arepas for dinner, or walking to the theater for a matinee. According to local news sources (a.k.a. Twitter), several businesses that were there when I left town have since closed shop, and new ones that I’m unfamiliar with have taken their place. The local friends I just started making within the last year are having fun without me, and I can only hope that we’ll be able to pick up our friendships where we left off.

So where am I headed as I come “home?” Well, I am setting up a temporary residence at my mom and step-dad’s house, the place I grew up, before heading up to their lake house in Wisconsin. My mom will be with me, as well as my cat, and I’ll have the chance to see some of my extended family as they pass through for visits. My parents have only owned the lake house for about two years, but that area of the Northwoods is imprinted in my memory since we took many vacations to the same lake during my youth. It’s strange to retrace my footsteps in these places, for I can see the ways in which I’ve changed, yet the scenery seems to have remained so much the same despite our time apart.

Present homes, past homes, permanent homes… I’m full of questions about what constitutes that special place, especially as a classic homebody by nature. Home is certainly wherever my husband is, but what about when your pet and family is in another place, and your friends and personal belongings in another altogether? My heart is in a dozen different places concurrently, and yet I feel like an outsider in each one. It’s a feeling that has set me adrift without an anchor.

I’m not quite home when I’m surrounded by people and things I love yet in a place that doesn’t feel geographically my own. And no matter how much I love a place, if it’s missing those important people (and pets), it’s a home without heart.

But isn’t that the nature of life, and especially of travel and living abroad? As we move along our journeys, we pick up pieces along the way—stories of the people we meet, experiences, traditions, relationships, favorite meals, beautiful sights, a shoebox full of mementos—and at the same time scatter bits of ourselves all over the map. All the while, the people we love are on their own parallel but separate journeys. We get attached, we let go. We get comfortable, we uproot. We each become a scrapbooked collection of people, places and things that make our hearts feel at home.

I’m trying to learn to drift with the flow I find myself in, because I can turn to whoever and whatever I do have around me at the time, and know that I’ll be able to collect the rest of the pieces along the way. I’ll cobble together my own version of home, wherever I may be.

(Halfway through writing this, I realized this topic felt familiar, so I have to give credit to Jill for inspiring the theme of this post!)

{Image credit: Me}