Home

        
When people ask me: “Where are you from?” I find it hard to answer.

My home is not so much a place as it is something that grew inside of me, or as James Baldwin would say, my home is “an irrevocable condition,” a condition I acquired in the “way back” of a Rambler station wagon in the time before seatbelts and the interstate highway system, in the time when families were large, children were the cargo, and luggage went on the roof.

It was not the houses or the bicycles or the toys that we were leaving behind that spoke to me of home, but rather, it was the landscape that faded into the distance as the miles added up on our journey to somewhere else.  Eventually, the years added up alongside the miles, and even after I took the wheel, it was the landscape and the roots of the people it sprouted that let me know when I was home.

Necessity not wanderlust led me to spend so much time moving from place to place.  My father was a Master Sergeant in the United States Air Force. My early childhood was marked by frequent moves across the country as my father was deployed or re-assigned in the service of his country.  By the time we finally landed in suburbia, it was too late—my condition was chronic and could not be undone. I had the stubborn awareness that all places are not the same.  Though most of my life has been spent in the city, I know that the city is not my home. Urban living serves practical needs like higher education, employment, and access to state-of-the-art health care, but my home is in small towns and wide open spaces, places that serve my soul: 

     My home is where laundry flaps on a clothesline and cows graze in the pasture.

     My home is where the air smells of rain, wet dirt, and new grass.

     My home is where Amish buggies and giant combines slow the few cars trailing behind them.

     My home is on dusty dirt roads where indigenous people sell their colorful handicrafts from makeshift           stands against a backdrop of majestic mountains and prickly cacti.

     My home is in small villages where people know your name and generations of your family. 

     My home is where people give directions to strangers using fence posts, barns, and disabled tractors as         landmarks.

     My home is where there are old cisterns in the yard and Seckel pears falling from trees that shade the             porch.

     My home is where children swim in the creek, race frogs, pick wild berries, and wear necklaces woven           from dandelions.

     My home is where the sheriff might also be a volunteer fireman and a farmer might drive the ambulance. 

     My home is where a big night out is a trip to the local custard stand—the only establishment for miles             around.

     My home is where the blast of a locomotive’s air horn and the rumble of coal cars say it is time for dinner.

     My home is where a trip to the city is a big deal but coming home is better.

     My home is where a person’s reputation is known and it matters, where hard work and resourcefulness          are The Designer’s brand.

     My home is where a man can have a doctorate in chemistry and still farm the land, where he has the               know-how to make everything from fudge to a barn and repair anything from a leaky faucet to a truck’s         torn upholstery.

     My home is where business establishments still close on Sundays.

     My home is where productive labor is a joy and people join hands with God to raise a crop or expand a           herd, places where people turn trees into furniture and fruit into jelly.
 
People ask me: “Where are you from?”

Where am I from?

I dwell in the city but my roots are in the dust of the earth and in the soil of country landscapes; my heart belongs to stalwart and generous neighbors who care for the earth and for each other; and my soul rests in the wisdom of The One who planted a garden in Eden and put there the man and woman he had made.