Jerri Corgiat explores this theme in her five-book family saga, Love Finds a Home. Set in small town Missouri, the series follows a generation of sisters as they navigate life and yearn for love. They search in the context of an extended family, with all the personalities and baggage, comfort and stress that go with it. But for all of them, finding love is an act of finding family, of going home.
Istoria Books invites you to share your "homecoming" experiences. Post a comment featuring a favorite memory of your own "coming home" story. Tell us what going home means to you. We will share the responses with our friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook, look here; on Twitter, keep an eye on #istoriabooks.
When I was in my late teens, my family lived in Belgium for almost four years. I got very attached to our home there and worried that when we left, a piece of my new-found adulthood would be left behind. I didn’t want to go. But eventually my folks had to return to the States. I remember very clearly the day we moved out. I expected to feel all sorts of regret, but as I walked around the bare house with the rolled-up rugs, something struck me. This wasn’t home. Home is where the people are. Home was wherever my family went. The house was just a building. I never missed the place a day.
ReplyDeleteI was born and raised in Baltimore. Even when we lived in Washington, DC--a relatively short drive down the highway--I still felt pulled back to "Bal'mer." So it was a big step for me when we moved to Vermont and lived there for 16 years. As lovely as Vermont is, I continued to feel the pull home, and finally, six years ago, we moved, well, close to "home" -- central PA, an hour from my hometown. I thought I'd still feel that Charm City tug, but I've discovered being an hour from my sister in Maryland and being surrounded by the landscape, weather and outlook of the mid-Atlantic has provided me with that sense of home I'd been yearning for all those years away.
ReplyDeleteI had a nomadic childhood growing up and while it allowed me to soak up experiences and cultures it never allowed for me to stay put and this became important to me in later years. "Going Home" never really meant much to me because there never seemed a home to go back to. It was this house here, and that house there ... no emotional ties.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the notion of "going home" really spoke to me when I was faced with brain surgery last year. Everybody sidesteps the issue of death, of what it really means to be going home but when you know someone's opening your brains to have a looksie and insert a tube, it was then that I was truly prepared to "go home". Love and light.