Honey, I'm home.

Last week, as I was getting ready to head out to Nova Scotia for vaycay, I was at my brother's doing the kiddie and doggie swap.  Since I was packing up his kids to take them to our original hometown - we started to have a conversation about 'home' and what 'home' meant to us.  The two of us grew up in Sydney, Nova Scotia - he left when he was 18, I left when I was 20.  But we both share completely different views of the place where we grew up.  Although we were both pretty eager to bolt at our first chance, somehow he's not as connected as I am to the Island and everything it represents for me.  

After living in Ottawa for 10 years now, he said that he wouldn't call Ottawa 'home', but he also wouldn't call Cape Breton 'home' either. If you don't know where home is...doesn't this mean your homeless?  

Where IS 'home' for me?   

My only reference point, and I had never realized it before, was in relation to my travels.  If I'm traveling outside of Canada, I tell people that I'm "from" Toronto.  In Canada, I tell people I'm "from" Cape Breton.  But where I'm "from" is really irrelevant...sure my East Coast roots probably had a significant impact on the person I've become, but I think that has more to do with the way I was raised, the company I keep and ensuring I surround myself with magical people that make everyday life extraordinary.  So being "from" a place -for the most part - is really a latitude and longitude describer.

This week I realized in so many various moments, that 'home' is where I sense love, trust, laughter and warmth. I've traveled approximately 2700 miles in both a car and a plane this past week and realized that my home is sitting on the dock with my Aunt Lynda talking about life as a woman, a wife and a mom, it's laughing at the 'wheelchair cookies' with my nephew Rod during the bonfire making smores, it's rocking Lola to sleep for her morning nap, it's sitting by the pool with mom and dad doing absolutely nothing but feeling love, it's conversations with friends over eggwhite omelette's, it's hearing Jack yell my name and smiling as I walk closer to the car to meet him after 8 long months, it's the written words in a letter from my niece Samantha, it's the excitement of bringing maids of honours back to the boys to eat for the first time and it's the anticipation of seeing my friends in Toronto after missing them while I was away.

Pretty damn lucky to have all this warmth, protection and shelter in my home.