Where is home?

Sky over the lake, originally uploaded by leyaevelyn.

Last Sunday, when I could, (my usual Sunday morning ritual) I listened to The Sunday Edition, with Michael Enright. At one point he interviewed the Saskatchewan writer Guy Vanderhaeghe, author of The Englishman’s Boy. Vanderhaegue was talking about how he moved back to the west, his homeland, to write his western based novels. He thought most writers moved back home.

To me home is where I put my head. I was a restless person most of my life, moving every three years on the average. All around Manhattan. And several places in Nova Scotia. You can imagine what it is like to move all those art supplies and canvases!

I’ve been in this house fifteen years, the longest I’ve lived anywhere in my life. But I would never ever go back to live in Bethesda, Maryland where I grew up. But when I dream of home, it is always that house in Bethesda, the one where I had a small bedroom about the size of most bathrooms. I loved that small room. Just enough space to get from the bed to the closet to the chest of drawers and out the door. But I played in that little space, lots of imaginative games.

I still play imaginative games, but now on canvas, with paint. And I have lots of space for that. This is home for now. I’d rather be here. Any day.