I am waiting for it to happen. It has been 46 weeks, 325 days, 7800 hours, 468,000 minutes, and 20, 080, 000 seconds since we moved from Texas to Arizona. But I haven’t experienced that feeling yet.

The cacti are still a novelty and I am still pulling my camera out, taking pictures. As I drive on the highway, I notice there is not any errant pieces of white littering the pathway. Instead of graffiti, there are intricate etches of lizards and flowers carved into stone, a local hieroglyphic of sorts. The cars move at a perfect cadence, a rhythmic beat, with no honking horns to disrupt the symphony.  Little resorts line the streets, the green palm trees opening their arms, convincing the lost that peace is at its doorsteps. From my own welcome mat, in twenty minutes, I can hike deep brown boulders, and take in a panoramic view of the whole city, its natural glory hard to ignore.

But what I am searching for I don’t find in these details.  I am hunting for a feeling. I want to call my new place home, but every time I make this attempt, I stop. For the first time in my life, because I am so far away from my beginnings, I’ve had to define what home really means to me.

When I first considered the word home, I thought about the obvious. Home is a place of comfort, of refuge, primarily a resting place for you, your family, and your personal possessions. But for me home is something more. It is not necessarily a single place, but somewhere I can see my beginnings, where people not only know me, but get me, and where I am not constantly clicking my camera. It is a feeling that comes without requiring reminders. That is home.

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What is your definition of home?  If you moved away from your “hometown”, when did your new place of residence become home? Is home a feeling or place for you?