From One Home to Another

Joe Posnanski wrote a great, and long, blog post about what defines “Home” and it seemed poignant to me as I made the biggest decision of my life. I was about to move away from the only place I’ve ever known, the people I’ve spent so many years getting in and out of trouble with, having good times, great times, and tough times. I was leaving my actual family and all of the people who had become family.

I heard my grandmother cry and say this might be the last time we ever see each other. I watched my grandfather rush back into the house rather than cry in front of me. I tried to hold back tears watching my sister leave walk away wiping tears off her cheek. I cried and held my mother in the kitchen grateful that she wasn’t able to see me off because I didn’t know if I would actually be able get on the road.

Good byes have never been so tough.

I will never forget my last night with my friends. Finally understanding how close we had all become and how important they all were to me. But even more shocking was how much they were going to miss me. I never really appreciated my own place in the group dynamic and that the emotions I was feeling were shared by so many other people in my life. Every moment of that night was an awakening and an emotional struggle.

I hate good byes.

But…there are things that happen in your life that are completely unexpected and force you out of your comfort zone. Circumstances push you to grow as person, to experience a part of yourself that you might not have realized existed. The most obvious of these is falling in love and, being a romantic, once that happened to me there was only one goal in my mind. I had to be with the person I love, any place without her would feel incomplete.

I miss everyone back East and that will never change. Yet, as I drove 2600 miles through the heart of this immense country racing to be with the woman I love, I realized I was carrying my friends, my family, and my Home with me. I will always be a Mass-hole, New England will always be at the essence of who I am no matter where I live, and nothing that happens in the future will change that.

So…When I finally pulled into the driveway in Phoenix, grateful to be off the long road (I’ll have more about the actual trip itself in a later post), and I wrapped my arms around the reason for my move there was only one thing I could think to say,

“Hey beautiful, I’m home.”