On vacation at home

Wait, what?

It’s a very odd feeling to at the same time not have a home but call several places home. At times I feel rather rootless, because I’ve never lived or stayed in the same place for a longer significant period of time.

Sønderborg is home to me in many ways because it is the only place that I’ve lived in the same house, permanently, for 7 years (actually, the only place for more than 3 /or4 years). This is where my parents are from, where my grandparents and aunts and uncles live, where I went to school, where we went on vacation when we returned to Denmark for visits.

The other home is Bel Air, which, depending on how you count, is the place that I’ve lived most years cumulative - 3 years in the nineties, and then 2002-(2009). Even so, after 2005, Bel Air was really only my temporary break and weekend home, with College Park being the other home.

Now, I have an address in Odense in Denmark, which technically is home. Yet, when summer vacation rolls around and I head to Bel Air, I say that I am “going home for the summer.” I also have an apartment in southern Denmark for during the work-week. This is also home - but in a different way.

A few weeks I caught myself talking about the first time I took the boy “home” – and I was actually talking about the first time I took him to Sønderborg to meet my grandparents and my aunt and uncle.

I am still very excited to truly bring the boy home at Christmas time. This time I am talking about the Bel Air home and my parents home.

Home is where the heart is - sometimes love multiplies.