Under the Sun: Home is many things to many people

"I remember, I remember the house where I was born, The little window where the sun came peeping up at morn ...." — Thomas Hood

Like many Snowbirds, I have been preparing to go home. Ordinarily, my husband and I would have left by now. Some medical appointments have delayed our departure this year, however; every year we seem to head north a little later.

In the meantime, we have been enjoying the slower pace in Naples and could get used to it. It made me remember when we first vacationed in Naples during the '60s. At that time, Naples had only one stop light and didn't seem to "wake-up" before 10 a. m., but that's another story.

There is a certain familiarity to my scribbled, "to-do" lists. I could have used last year's with a few adjustments. I even found one article saved in my "very important files," which is a little yellowed around the edges. I had clipped it from the Naples Daily News a few years ago. It gives detailed instructions on how to close your home.

However, it is one thing to have detailed lists and quite another to check them off as completed.

A couple of days ago, I was weary with the unending waits on the phone as I attempted to make some of the changes in utilities and other services. I kept getting the message, which I'm sure is familiar to you: "Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line... blah, blah, blah and so on ..."

I let my mind wander a bit and for a break, I attempted to mentally define the word, "home." I soon wished that I'd picked some other word, as my first revelation revealed how much emotional baggage is attached to "home."

I needed to decide if I was trying to describe a physical building or feelings; if a building, then which one? Did I mean my childhood home? If feelings, did I mean security or the sense of being loved, which I strongly associate with home?

My mind raced to some proverbial poetry, which relates to home. Robert Frost in his poem, "Death of the Hired Man," penned, "When you have to go there, home is the place where they have to take you in" — a bit of a dismal thought.

Bob Dylan's words, "How does it feel to be without a home? Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?" also flitted cross my consciousness.

An early habit from home (at my parent's insistence) always leads me to the dictionary to clarify a word. Thus, when I finally got off the phone, Webster revealed that home has a great assortment of meanings.

It depends in part if you are using home as a noun, adjective or an adverb. The dictionary's listing of compound words such as homebody, homeland, homeless and homemade, clarified some of the reasons why home carries so much emotional baggage.

Obviously, I could not come to a definitive meaning for home but it was a pleasant diversion from my mundane tasks at hand.