Coming Home

On Wednesday I hopped on a flight back to Chicago to spend Spring Break (and Passover, per the post yesterday) with my family.

In the car on the way back my dad turned to me and said, "So, for the first two nights you're sleeping on the Futon." My brother, sister-in-law and grandmother were staying with us.

However, the question that I keep wondering as a 20 something year old, who was across state lines for college and now continues to live 800 miles away, is when does the home you grew up in stop being your "home"? (yes, I know there is something wrong with the grammatical placement of the quotation marks since they do not include the question mark; however, I don't like how it looks that way).

I'm immediately inclined to answer that question by saying that it stops becoming your home when you no longer have a bedroom that is yours. That is, a bed which you slept in for most of your life, still having most of the furniture that you used, and the general decor of the room (pennants, posters, pictures, books) is still similar.

If that is the case, then my home is still in Chicago. I still have my bed, my blanket, my cubs posters, my pennants from different stadiums, my desk, my bookshelf and my pictures.

My brother lost his room when he got married. Until then, he still had his bed, and room, fully intact -- aside from the treadmill my mom put into his room a number of years ago.

Yet, on some level, having been relegated to two different futons in two nights so that others who were staying with us could make use of my room and what is now the "Den" (which in reality is just my brother's old room with his bed replaced by a futon and newly painted, and, uncharacteristically, accented wall), I'm inclined to say that for someone who comes home 3-4 times a year, my home is away from Chicago.

This is not to say that I don't feel at home here, I do. Fully. Yet, the question that I think makes me decide this is, if my parents wanted to turn my room into something else (which they have contemplated), would I really have any solid reason that they shouldn't? Probably not.

If you have any thoughts on the subject, feel free to leave them.