Home

If time is relative, then distance must also be. Driving back to my hometown with my sister was a sober reminder of just how mountainous the distance between the stages in a life can be. Even though the sum of actual driving time adds up to about three hours from the smoke-laden bingo parlors and discount auto dealerships of Enid, Oklahoma, to the windy, treeless frontier of the Oklahoma Panhandle, the trip itself seems endless, especially if it's been a while since you last made the journey to the middle of nowhere.

I haven't been here since Christmas, and I've always been divided on the issue of making trips back home. On one hand, I have a grand total of seven relatives who still live in Hooker (compared to the fifty who have, at one point or another, lived here throughout my childhood); on the other hand, a wealth of friends, school teachers, principals, pastors, community theater directors, and church family members still call this area their home. After moving away, I've since felt compelled to visit the people who I feel care so much about me, but in reality, I might just be exalting myself to the status of an overrated celebrity in the minds of those whom I always think bite their nails in anticipation of my return.

Nonetheless, I'm home as of now, at least technically. But what is "home," really? Where you grew up? Where your family is? A broken-down double wide mobile home on the outskirts of a meager town of less than two thousand people? When my friends would ask me where I was going for the summer, I never really said "home." I used phrases like, "going to live with my mom" or "moving upstate" to eliminate the boundaries that come with calling one place this or that. I guess I mean my home TOWN. In an ideal sense, I define home as where I feel safest, which is a number of different places. I have a home church, filled with people who care about me, and a town where I spent most of my childhood, filled with people who take notice of me. People who know my face and whose faces I recall by name. It seems like the more a person is in my life, the more they become a part of what comforts me.

Funny how so much can happen in a year.