Home, Where the Blue-Tailed Lizards Roam

In the movie Hook, there’s a scene in which a crew of adult men playing baseball cheer at a young boy to “Run Home Jack.” They have confused the basic baseball terminology of “Home Run” with Run Home. It was one of those movies that shaped my childhood, and it stuck with me into adulthood. I think often of running home, away from Neverland back to where I belong.

But as an adult, I get to choose where I belong.

And so I have to decide what exactly that means, exactly where home is.

We were parked along the salt flats that line the South San Franciscan Bay in the heat of summer 2020.

Our dog had exactly two small swaths of grass she could pee on. Aside from that greenery, the park was pavement-concrete, pavement-concrete, pavement-concrete. Rinse, repeat.

On stagnant warm days, the smell of rotten fish and hot salt wafted over our specified spot. On the good days, it was blisteringly hot on the asphalt, and we walked our dog early and late so as to save her paws from the black tar. During the middle of the day, we’d drive to a grassy area so she could relieve herself.

I walked to the nearest park a mile away which had been built on an old garbage dump that burped methane which was burned off for energy. The smell was caustic, but I’ll do almost anything for a good walk.

But the best part is that in the San Francisco area, four of my best friends reside. Even in the height of the pandemic, we found ways to be six feet away in the shade of the RV, sipping on sangria and talking for hours. Reconnecting, reminiscing, growing.

But I didn’t feel at home. Comfortable, yes. I love heat, love walking, and those moments with my friends are priceless. Home I was not.

But I can tell you something else. We found ourselves outside of Colorado Springs about six weeks later. Up in the mountains of Colorado, a stark difference from the rush with which California operates on, and yet I felt no more at home here, either. It was pleasant. Fun. We hiked, played mini-golf, took long walks. Colorado is beautiful, serene, and calm.

Not home.

Now, let me rewind to a place between California and Colorado. Nevada. At eight-thousand-foot elevation, that was home for a week. Maybe it was two. Part of me is homesick for it now. The thick scent of pine. The dry heat: so dry I could hear every step that I took while I hiked by myself on a Thursday afternoon in August. It was the same sun of the California bay, but it felt different on my shoulders. Little rascals of chipmunks raced back and forth. The yellow jackets hovered near a water spigot. Home. Not forever, though.

Home for a week, or two.

Moving across the United States so rapidly meant we were always choosing tiny moments to pin to what we deemed as home, forced us to be in the moment, and what I realized is the places I’ve visited are either home or they are not. There’s no in-between, no shades of gray, no maybe-kinda-sorta feels like home. You get there, and you just know. You’re home.

And traveling full time also meant we had no home base. None. For the first two years, I did not miss having a specified place to decompress, to call my own. Until, that is — in very a Reader’s Digest version — everything started breaking and we couldn’t keep up… or didn’t want to. And I got homesick. But homesick for nowhere, and that’s a strange place to be.

And still, I can’t say what makes home, home.

In San Diego, the feeling of home greeted me in late February with the scents of blooming flowers before Spring had even sprung.

In Virginia, I nestled into home in a small town and watched a baseball game being played into the dusk of the night, the lightning bugs lifting off all around me.

Utah brought me home among the red dirt outside Moab. The soil stained my clothes, our floors, and the dog.

I found home in Dallas, Texas but not Houston or Waco or Padre Island.

There was no home in Louisiana or Arizona or the Carolinas. Not even in Mexico among the street dogs.

Why?

I wish I could tell you. I really do.

Of all the places I’ve been, I don’t know what it is that sets some out as home and others not so much.

Just now, while writing this, I stepped outside. It’s after ten at night in Tennessee, so it’s dark out, even on the longest day of the year. I wanted to check on the fireflies, as though I have any control over them. The thickness of the humidity hit me from my head to my feet: a wall of warm water. And unlike every single person I’ve ever met, I love humidity. The fireflies greeted me, but also did cicadas and bullfrogs.

Blooming mimosa trees and jumping lightning bugs and groggy coyotes crossing the road when I accidentally wake them up from an afternoon nap — this is home. A blue-tailed skink running over my bare feet, that’s home. Purple potatoes harvested despite blight and scab, that’s home. For now.

But I might find home elsewhere, too.

Some time.

I am home. Even if it isn’t forever, for right now, I am. `

Many of us go through our lives rarely moving. Others of us move often, get itchy feet to find a new home when we’re in one place too long. Some people picture their forever homes. Others know there is no such thing.

But it isn’t easy. Not easy to find home.