Home again...

I leave today for Atlanta, home for three whole weeks this time, which should be enough to clean the house, pay the bills, register the cars properly, turn in some freelance assignments, and maybe even have time to grill out, talk to my husband, write a poem, and visit with friends. I'm excited!


Atlanta is home, and I'm good with that now. I'm excited about the good things coming to Atlanta, the growing friendships and the changing neighborhood I live in. It's home in one kind of way, because I live there, because my family lives there, and my new friends are so great! It will remain home to me, if we find the jobs we want, if it continues to get better. But I'm thinking about "home" in other ways.


This trip was very wonderful. Good to see family, BEA, do some radio, etc. But most of all, this trip was about Baltimore for me, Maryland (beyond the city) more generally too.


I got to go and spend some time with my friends Peter and Gwen on their family farm in Annapolis, and I got to visit my best friend Susan's family in their Rouse house at Cross Keys. I drove through West Baltimore, and ate dinner in Ellicott City. I wound my way through back roads on the W Va border, and took the MARC train to DC. So I found myself thinking about Maryland, about the many ways people live in this, my home state... and about how I might live if I were to live here. On the water, rural, urban, southern MD, eastern shore. At the beach. Maryland is many regions all rolled into one.


I miss it.


I'll always miss it. I think "home" plays a big part in my constant struggle with place/permanence... maybe it's all about never having moved home.


I feel settled when I'm here in a way I don't feel settled elsewhere. Like this is how the world is "supposed to look" around me. These trees. This bay. My temperature.


Maybe. Maybe someday. Maybe someday there will be a job here good enough to pull us home, teaching or editorial, or something for the husband. Something good enough to convince the husband that we should try it out.


Chestertown. St Mary's County. Charles Village. Patapsco. Druid Hill Park.


It's beautiful.


But maybe I'll never get back here. Maybe I'll be wrestling this feeling forever. Missing Baltimore until I die, because other things are always causing me to make other choices, or becasue deep deep down I don't want it that badly.


There's a quote (and I'm about to misquote it) my dad and my sister have both mentioned to me recently, by CP Snow: "The greatest measure of what a man wants... is what a man has."


Bearing in mind that Snow wasn't born in Rwanda, and that some "men" don't have the ability to "want" in an equal way because of the situations they were born into... I think this quote rocks.


If I'm not choosing something I think I want, it's because I chose something else. Good to remember.


I still miss home, but...


How about you? Where is home? Do you live there?