Homeward bound

How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. So far, so much between, you can never go home again. You can go home, it's good to go home, but you never really get all the way home again in your life. And what's it all for? All I tried to be, all I ever wanted and went away for, what's it all for?

Just one way, you do get back home. You have a boy or a girl of your own and now and then you remember, and you know how they feel, and it's almost the same as if you were your own self again, as young as you could remember.
        -- James Agee
        -- A Death in the Family, 1957

Take it from a rolling stone: there really is no place like home.

I’ve felt “at home” quite a few times along my route, usually when invited into the private apartment of one of the folks I’ve met, but also during meals and other activities.

It’s a great feeling – sort of a combination of feeling warm and cozy and well fed and comfortable and entertained and relaxed and satisfied and cared-for.

Sometimes I feel that way just because of a chair or couch. When I’m sore or tired, or sore and tired, just nestling into a soft, supportive and otherwise just-right seat makes everything else seem unimportant.

Another kind of “at-home” experience is the product of proximity to people. Put me in the company of some copasetic fellow humans and I go right into a comfort zone. Barriers that I usually have in place; I feel free to expose my feelings and risk being found lacking.

It’s the combination of people and place, I guess, that puts folks in a condition most conducive to happiness. And the ideal, it seems to me, is when one is part of a family that lives together in a comfortable home.

On an equal playing field, all things being equal, with average luck and by applying good common sense, it should be possible for most people to enjoy four score and seven years, more or less, of the good life.

Many of the hundreds I’ve met over the past nine months have done just that.

As a representative of those who’ve been less fortunate, I’d just like to say to all of those whose lives have gone pretty much according to plan: “lucky you.”

Most of us make mistakes and/or are affected by events outside our control that scotch the deal. Hooray for those whose errors didn’t prove fatal to family and for whom unavoidable intrusions weren’t destructive.

As I turn west Thursday, and begin my long journey from the Atlantic back to the Pacific, I’m determined to explore paths toward home – not in the sense of it being a physical place, but home as sort of a lifestyle that facilitates happiness.

Younger readers may simply refer to the manual (as presented on television and elsewhere). But for those of us who must begin a new search later in life, the options are fewer (biological clock-wise).

That said, I do believe I’ll find examples of folks in the over-fifty crowd who have encountered problems but managed to get those home fires burning again despite chronological limitations.

If I stay on pace, I’ll have a chance to survey several hundred more seniors before trail’s end. As I continue these interviews, I’m going to focus more attention on ideas like “family,” “joy,” “meaning in life” and “home.”

'Mid pleasures and palaces

Though we may roam,

Be it ever so humble,

There's no place like home.


A charm from the skies

Seems to hallow us there,

Which seek thro' the world,

Is ne'er met with elsewhere.


Home, home, sweet sweet home,

There's no place like home.
        -- John Howard Payne, 1823