What is Home?

Late last night, I flew back into town after a week away, the city lights covering the Valley like a blanket of incandescent flowers. I’ve flown into Phoenix at least a dozen times at this point. Usually, I can identify a handful of landmarks, like my antenna-scarred South Mountain or the twinkling lights of the bridges spanning Tempe Town Lake.

Flying into Nashville, however, was always different. After a decade of take-offs and landings, I became intimately familiar with the topography below me, easily able to pinpoint my leafy Bellemeade neighborhood, my brick-walled apartment complex, the street corner of my lime-green Mexican restaurant, even from 10,000 feet up.

Despite my dozens of arrivals and departures, I haven’t been able to do that in Phoenix. The freeways looping the city, the fake lakes snaking through cookie-cutter neighborhoods, the rockstrewn mountain ranges hugging the city close — these have been areas generally unfamiliar to me, just a hodgepodge of humanity beyond my knowledge.

But last night was different.

Last night, I looked down and realized — WAIT A MINUTE, that glowing freeway crossing the dark swatch of undeveloped desert land: that’s my freeway. And that — that right there! — that’s my exit. And just over there — that’s my apartment complex. That’s my home!

Home.

Six months. Half a year.

That’s how long I’ve called Phoenix home. Maybe, like other new experiences, this is a honeymoon period: an oasis of bliss soon to evaporate into dry doldrums of the everyday. (Or… maybe not.)

But I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of home lately — what makes a place truly home. I’ve lived in a handful of places in my brief 29-year spell on earth: raised in Louisiana, a decade in Nashville, a brilliant semester-long stint in London, and now Phoenix. All, at different times, and often in overlapping terms, have felt like home to me. Some still feel like home. Others do not.

What exactly makes a place a home, though?

Home, to me, is more than an address of residence. I’ve lived in places that felt more like tense stand-offs than that home-sweet-home feeling, spaces I’ve actively avoided rather than sought comfort in.

Maybe you have, too. Maybe your home-but-not-quite experience is an apartment with months-long unresolved water leaks, or a combative roommate that steals your peace, or a city that still feels as unknown as the day you first arrived.

So what exactly is home? How do you put language to that home-sweet-home feeling? It is like a hug from your favorite person. The first bite of your favorite comfort food. Staying snug under the covers on a cold winter’s morning.

Home is an inhale-exhale feeling of security, a place where you’re greeted by name, a sense of belonging, a warm familiarity, the chance to look down from 10,000 feet, and with relief realize THAT — right there! — is my apartment complex. I’m home.

What, I wonder, is home to you?

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