Home is (?)

I knew it would happen, but I have sort of forgotten that it would. It was shocking, then, when I tried to sign in to my UNCG email account and I got an error message that read "log account expired."

I'll admit, I go to the English department website sometimes and just surf around, or watch the scrolling stories go by on the universities home page. I've stopped getting mail for awhile now in my UNCG inbox, but somehow it was always comforting to be able to check my email when I wanted to.

I'm hoping it'll be good for me, this enforced shut-out from the corner of cyber-space that defined so many years of life. Instead of being suspended between two spaces, checking both my new school and my old school's email, I now find my academic identity squarely situated in only one email address.

Although I've been forced to cut ties with my old email, I'm so fortunate that ties to my advisors, my colleagues, my friends, and my family can continue. I wonder what "home is where the heart is" might mean when your heart is with so many people flung far and wide by jobs and other life circumstances? I'm beginning to think home is not a place but a state of mind, more like the phrase "I feel at home with you."

Thinking about home in this way might make it easier for me to get my Texas drivers license. I have heard you don't get to keep your old one, and I can't yet bring myself let go of this last piece of tangible evidence that says I belong in North Carolina. Just the other day at the security checkpoint in the airport the security personnel asked me if I was traveling with the guy in front of me. In response to my quizzical look he shrugged and said "you both have North Carolina licenses." Eager to strike up a conversation with a fellow North Carolinian, I introduced myself to this traveller and he asked me "so what are you in Waco for?" It was a stunning question, but not nearly as stunning as the answer I heard coming out of my mouth: "Oh, I live here now."

In moments like that I realize this isn't home -- yet. But if home does not have to be just one place, but can be a state of mind, an attitude I have toward lots of different places and people and moments in time, then I'm rather anxious to add Texas to that list. My email account may have expired, but obviously my affection and attachment for UNCG and Greensboro have not. Nor will it ever, I imagine. But this doesn't preclude attachments to other places. I'm still quite attached to the lake house I grew up in, and to my best friend from 5th grade, and to the local farmer on highway 29. They are all home to me, and in this way I suppose I will always be coming from or going toward home. What I'm trying to do now is to learn to be at home.