"maybe that's all family really is..."

I've been wanting to write a blog about the concept of "home" for a while now, but a lot has gone on in the last ten days or so and I've gotten sidetracked. I'm really not even running on full steam or whatever right now either, but I want to write. I need to write. That's just the mood I'm in I suppose.

Two years ago, just after graduating high school, I moved with my parents into my grandmother's house. We'd inherited it after her death in 2007 and had been deciding between renting it out or moving in ourselves, and eventually my parents chose the latter. So we packed all our things and moved out of the house I'd done most of my growing up in. I had lived in three houses total at that point, but the most significant parts of my life before moving had occurred while I lived there. Looking back, I feel like it was my first "home."

Since then, for the last two years, we've lived in Moreno Valley. It's taken almost that long for me to make any friends that actually live out here, and I still often drive back to Orange County to see old friends and to stay at Ashley's whenever she's in town. Driving back to Orange County, specifically back to Tustin, has always felt like driving home. Or at least, it has until very recently.

There's a particular exit that has always felt familiar to me; it's the exit I always took on my way back home from Ashley's house when I still lived in Tustin. I haven't had to use it much in the last two years, obviously, but I was with her last week and we happened to drive that way and for the first time, it didn't feel familiar. It didn't feel like I was driving home anymore. It felt like any other exit on any freeway in any town. Any ownership I had previously felt, any familiarity, was gone. It was the strangest feeling, but it made me realize that Tustin is no longer home to me. It also made me realize that I'm really not sure where home is anymore.

The movie Garden State has a scene in which the two main characters discuss the concept of home and I feel that their conversation is particularly relevant to what I am trying to describe. Zach Braff's character, Andrew Largeman, has returned home to New Jersey for his mother's funeral, but he doesn't feel at home in the house he grew up in anymore. Sam, Natalie Portman's character, claims to still feel at home in her house and Andrew says,

"You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is, a group of people that miss the same imaginary place."

I've always loved that scene and that last line, and I think in a way it describes exactly what I've been feeling. I haven't yet begun to feel specifically "at home" in Moreno Valley, even after two years of living here. I know this is my house, this is where I live, and this is where my family is, but I don't really feel like this is home. I also know that I no longer feel like Tustin is home either. Right now, I'm not sure where home is, but I do know where my family is. And maybe that's what family is for me.