Home

When I was a child
Home was where I lived
With my family
My parents and my brothers

But home is supposed to be a place
Where you are loved and cared for
Not where you're scared to be who you are
And live in fear of your secret being discovered

In my late twenties home was
The house of a lesbian couple
Who befriended my girlfriend and me
Where I experienced true acceptance for the first time

When they moved to California a few years later
They took my sense of home with them
Whenever I came to visit, simply flying in over the bay
Felt like coming home

When it was time to leave, my heart would break
As the plane took off and made that sweeping bank
Giving me one last look of the city at night
Before it turned heading back towards the east coast

But then eight years ago I met a woman
And she became my home
For wherever she is
Is where I long to be

Then I met and got to know her family
And they're unlike any family I've ever known
They may not be blood kin but they give love
Freely and unconditionally

So now my sense of home
Is no longer just my wife
It has expanded exponentially
To include her sisters and their husbands and their children

To me home is not a place
Or a house, which can burn to the ground
A house can't give affection or security
Home is the people who truly love you

So, if home is where the heart is
I wish I were there...

3.11.08

CMT

Author's Notes

This poem was inspired by something one of my sisters-in-law said to Kodi and me in an email. She said, "And both of you can come home at any time, we'd just figure it out." Her use of the word "home" touched me deeply. I was trying to write a reply to tell her how it made me feel, when I stopped in mid-sentence and carriage-returned a few times and wrote the poem instead.

After reading the poem, my sister-in-law said that it reminded her of the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, where one of the main charactors pulled a quote from the Bible.

In the Book of Ruth, Ruth said to Naomi,

"Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me."
— (Ruth 1:16-17 NIV)

She was right. I think that's a perfect description of how I feel. I really love Kodi's family. And yes, I know they're my family, too. I love them so much more than I can ever say.