"Home is Where We Find Our Family"

After over 3 months now of living in Charlotte with my mother and stepfather, Jodi and I finally just closed on a town house. They are stuck with us for a few more weeks while we wait for our Georgia-stored stuff to join us in North Carolina. We are excited about achieving our goal of some serious empty nest downsizing that we probably never would have gotten around to doing if we had not moved out of Atlanta. We are going to learn how hard that is when our stored stuff proves to be too much stuff even though we worked really hard to give away or throw away as much as we could before we packed. We are VERY excited we will be within short walking distance from my brother and my sister-in-law. Actually, that excitement is really about their three young kids who will have an uncle and an aunt nearby with no busy roads to cross when they decide to run away from home someday for an afternoon—or when they need me to run over to read a bedtime story because my brother is not doing it right. I can’t wait. 

When we did our walk-through just before closing, our new place was completely empty. It did not feel like home. We will replace the carpet and change the colors on the walls to suit our tastes and our stuff, but even knowing that and imagining our stuff in there didn’t make it feel homier. Jodi and I have moved into new residences together five times before, so this is not a new experience. One weird part for me is that it will be the first place I have lived in Charlotte that does not have my mother in it. The house she lives in now is not the one I grew up in, but it still feels like home because that is where she is. I suspect that (without her in it) if I went into my childhood home it would not feel like home anymore—and that I would get arrested for trespassing. 

I have driven down my old street twice since moving back to Charlotte. Surprisingly, that does not feel like home, either, because I don’t see any of my Biltmore Dr. brothers. Even if I did, they would look wrong without the bowl cuts and tube socks on display in the photo above (circa 1974). Please understand that I am not lamenting fashion changes over the last 44 years. I am particularly glad they changed by the time I met Jodi, though I still may have been wearing tube socks. I have no doubt that our town house is going to feel like home soon because that is where Jodi will be—except when she runs away for an afternoon to go play with our niece and nephews. 

I guess it goes without saying (though I will say it anyway) that home for many is identified by the people more than the place. At least this is the case for me and with the moving around we’ve done in the last 32 years, there are a bunch of places that feel like home because of the people still there who are like family. The funny thing about my old hometown in Charlotte has been that the more new people I meet, the more it feels like home. 

Home is where we find our family. If we make everyone a brother or sister, we never will be far from home—and neither will they. 

It is good to be home and God is good.

 Joe B.