What is home?

Two weeks ago, I bought a house. That is, I actually purchased a house. I mean to say, I presented an absolutely enormous bank check to an attorney and signed a lot of papers and now I (and Bank of America) own a house. In a town about 20 miles west of Worcester, Mass.

So here I am, at 57, learning how to be a homeowner. I hope I do OK at it.

I still have not really gotten my emotional mind (as opposed to my intellectual mind) around this colossal fact. It's a nice house, faintly reminiscent of the one my parents owned when I was in high school, college and for many years after that. It has a yard with trees in the front and flowers in back, and a deck and two stories. Well, probably more stories than that, but only two you can see.

The house is starting to feel a little bit like home. It has my stuff in it, and I've slept here for two weeks now, and the dog already takes it for granted that this is his place. But still it's strange. I've never owned a house before, and it feels like a huge change in my life, and rather a daunting one. I don't know much about taking care of a car, either, but I know where to take it to find someone who does. With a house, there is no one "house mechanic," you've got to find a whole retinue of persons to do this, that and this other, and first you have to know that those things need to be done. Daunting.

But it's a much better place for my sweetie to visit, and so far it's been a pleasant place to be. But there is one obvious major lack -- my sweetie. She visits, but she doesn't live here. I am impatient for her to move in, but our other house must either be sold or rented, and that hasn't happened yet. So we have to just visit.

I have met a friendly neighbor who actually left me a plant on the front stoop the day I moved in. She has also promised to bring over extra veggies from her garden and warned me of coyotes in the neighborhood. A good reason to continue my practice of keeping the pup on his leash and not letting him out by himself.

We walk in the morning, when I get home from work, and after dinner, usually going a little less than half a mile each time. It's quiet here, and pretty. It will be a good home for us when my sweetie's house sells.

Right now, "home" is a bit elusive for me. The other house is still comfortable and familiar, but it's not home any longer. And the new house doesn't really completely feel like home yet, either. I don't think it will really feel like home until we're living together again. I have found that "home" isn't always a place. Sometimes it's a person, or people, or even words. I have experienced a sense of home in the words of the Episcopal prayer book, and in other books that are special to me.

I guess it's a sense of safety and belonging -- of being in your own place. Maybe of knowing that others' caring is with you even when they are absent.