There are few emotions more compelling than the feeling of “going home”.  “Home” has a particular meaning to each of us.

Home is more than the four walls where you rest, sleep, recharge your spirit and body. It’s where you work, play and where you feel you belong.

“Home” immediately conjures up the image of a safe haven, bringing to the surface feelings akin to what the womb must have felt like – warm, secure, cared for, and a sense of belonging to something greater than oneself. I was, and still am, privileged, because I live, work and play where I call “home”.

For people who cannot imagine – or better yet, live in – such a place, there is an elusive yearning – a “homeless” feeling, like a ship that sails the seas with no charted course, floating aimlessly, never finding a harbor in which to drop its anchor; or a bird flying over an endless sea searching for a place to nest but not finding one.

I love to travel for the exhilarating sense of discovery, expanding my horizons, meeting interesting people and the anonymity it provides. There remains, though, just under the surface of all that excitement, the comfort of knowing I have a place to call “home!” and I look forward to returning there. No matter how many times I have seen the sparkling azure coast of South Florida from a plane window, I still feel that comforting warmth in my heart, because I know I’m home. I strain my eyes and wrench my neck trying to spot my house, office, favorite beach, friends’ houses, or even where I get my groceries – all familiar places, with people in them who I’m looking forward to seeing. It’s a satisfying recognition that the small boy within me is still very alive and in need of that kind of reassurance. “Home is where the heart is,” as the saying goes. That is why even, as we move on to allegedly bigger and better things – careers, marriage, etc., the longing for one’s childhood “home” persists. One could be “houseless,” but as long as we are fortunate enough to have people around us – embrace us with nourishing support and love – we are never homeless.

Actually, in the dark winters of our lives, many of us continue to draw strength from our young formative years; and in the twilight of our years, when our memory becomes as capricious as the weather, memories of “home” remain as if they happened yesterday.

When I turn the knob to my front door and open it, my dogs, all four of them, tails wagging like metronomes out of control, rush to greet me with genuine happiness as if I had been away for years instead of a few days or weeks. The magazines are still exactly where I left them, as are the few things I forgot to bring with me. The scent of patchouli incense I habitually burn still lingers in the air.

Then, as I walk past the wall with so many photos of times gone by, together with family and friends, I instantly feel safe, secure and loved.

I pause for a moment, say “hello” to all of them, and, with a huge involuntary smile, think “It’s good to be “home!”

It’s very clear that “home” has little to do with structure, bricks and mortar or the “stuff” we fill it with. The often inexplicable feeling of “home” has everything to do with the spirit which lives there.

Michael French, is Agenda’s Home from Home columnist. Contact Michael at mf7954fla@gmail.com