I was catching up on a friend's blog and ran across this question: "is a home really ever a home after the heart of it has broken?" I had an answer almost immediately: "No...unfortunately it is never the same again. But new places and roles evolve and eventually you find nooks and crannies, but it just isn't home again until one day you create it anew with a different heart to pick up where the other one left off."

It's funny how two people can go through similar experiences, and though it changes each one in distinct and unique ways, there are some universal truths that accompany the experience. Losing a loved one, though it transforms your life uniquely to your situation, still brings with it a certain sense of loss that is uniform throughout the experience.

In some ways, growing up itself leads to those moments of loss...moving away, losing friends, feeling lost. But I think the loss of a parent intensifies that sense of falling away that cannot be equaled...until perhaps the loss of a spouse or child, neither of which I have had. I don't think I've ever been able to put into words until now that feeling of being trapped - trapped in a world that has many corners and crevices in which you belong, and yet at the same time, has no one place where you belong. There are many places to visit, but no one place to dwell.

Even after buying a house that is my "own" "home," that feeling of being a transient has yet to fade. Perhaps, as Friend has pointed out, it is because the heart doesn't quite dwell there yet. Home isn't just about space, furniture, decorating, entertaining or even feng shui. In the end, it is about the experience of sharing one's heart, loving and growing love there. Though I remember distinctly my various bedrooms and the decor changes over the years, some of which got my seal of approval and many of which did not, I do not remember my childhood home for its aesthetics. Sure, I remember the environment, but it is the memories from that environment...many of them creating the enivronment...but the memories nonetheless that still tug at my heart and bring a tear to my eye.

It is the kitchen window aptly placed so mom could spray dad with the sink hose while he was in the garden. It is the seafoam green walls that I hated that held the sanctuary of my parent's bedroom, in which was the dresser that held the jewelry, makeup and clothing that I played with as a child. It is the staircase coming into the house where the progression of my childhood pictures were displayed that I sat by awaiting my dad's return from his business trips, and the same stairs I climbed when I returned home from college. It's the shelves in the kitchen and the bedrooms that held all varieties of knick knacks and books that were built by my dad's hands at my mom's request. It's the dining table that came apart to grow larger for guests, but held just enough space for the three of us to dine together and talk about our days...and for my dad and I to argue politics over once I knew it all.

Do I miss the walls, the stairs, the table, and the window? Not really...what I miss is the life that was lived in them. When the heart is gone, and in this case it wouldn't have mattered which parent, the house no longer lives as a home. And so you leave, because it is painful to be in something that was once so alive and is no longer. And you try to create new life and new memories. But I have learned one thing - you can't ever recreate home. My home had a life I can never get back. I do hope, though, that one day I can create one anew with my heart as the center of a new home.

So...it has been a long long time since I've sat down to write. But I'm back. What is it that brings me back, you say? The radio. No, no...not music or talk radio, but something I heard on the radio from a caller.

If you listen to the radio at all, you know that people will sometimes call in with questions or dilemmas. Sometimes, they are actually worth pondering. The caller tonight, however, just made me sad in terms of thinking about the survival of our species, at least as moral beings.

The dilemma was this: her young son went to the zoo, and brought home a frog which happens to be an endangered species. Whether he meant to or not is unclear. Her dilemma? What do I tell my son now that he's had it a few days and is attached to it? Ummmm...am I the only one who is mystified by this? HELLO!!! GIVE IT BACK! Why is this a dilemma? If I had brought home anything that did not belong to me, intentionally or not, I would have been marched straight back to return it as soon as humanly (and institutionally) possible! The boy has kept it a few days and is attached to it?

Listen, I'm not a parent, but I hope to be one someday. I can't think of a single instance in which this situation would not have been resolved that day or the next. But...let's say I had an out of body experience and I was such a big softie that I let my kid keep an animal that is from the zoo and endangered (I mean an out of this universe out of body experience). What then? Oh, yeah...when my body crashed back to reality, I'd tell the kid I was wrong and that together we'd be making a return trip to the zoo to unload what is not rightfully ours to begin with. And this time, we're not going to be taking backpacks.

And that's how I see it...at least for now.