Going Home

     My father is moving home tomorrow morning. I am pondering what 'home' really means. In my father's case, it is where he was born, and where his mother lives. A brother and a son are there. If you call a whole state home, then his sister lives there too. Include neighboring states, and he gets a daughter and two grandkids.
     The 'home' that he is leaving is very un-homey apartment that he has no attachment to that happens to be less than a mile from another daughter and two grandkids. While the apartment was only occupied by him for about a year, it is in a county he has resided in for more than half his life.
     Without the old, "Home is where the heart is," what is it really? My father is not going to live in the same house he was born in, just the same town, so is a town your home? And if you have spent most of your life in a town you weren't born in, which one wins the title?
     When I was away at college, I went home to my dorm room after class, but home to San Diego for Christmas. To get technical about it, my mother lived in a suburb of San Diego, but I never told my college friends I would be going home to sunny La Mesa for the holidays. And how could I be at home where my mother lives in California, when my mother's home is states away in Utah where her mother lived?
     Half of the things from my fathers old home are now at my home - things he kept there for my kids who visited at least once a week since we lived down the street. His new home is 2000 miles away; he won't need those things anymore.
    Is home the building? The stuff in it? Is it the town, or the state, or the people who live with you or nearby? If you were born in Seattle, were raised in Kansas, your parents live in Texas, and you live in Detroit with your spouse and kids, how do you get home?