Home

For me, although I love where I currently live, home is Idaho.

It's Fiesta Ole and Walkers off Broadway and the Greenbelt and 17th Street and Skyline and Pancheri Road and the Grand Tetons and the Snake River and the Rocky Mountains and my family and my friends.

It's not where I was born, but it's where I grew up and became me.  Living there has shaped who I am, how I see things, and how I react to things.  It's shaped my hobbies, talents, and likes and dislikes (expect country music...no thank you).

Tomorrow I am going home with my two babies and my husband (who also calls it home).  I am starting to feel this delicious curl of anticipation at my first glimpse of the mountains; my first breath of solid, clean mountain air; and my flood of memories waiting at each street corner.  I know this place somewhere deep inside me, no matter the 12 years I've not called it "home."

It makes me wonder where my sons' home will be.  Sentimentally, I would love for it to be Seoul, but the reality is there will be no memories lurking on the street corners for them when we return again, no senses reawakened.  I suspect home will live in their hearts here, in our large Midwest city.  And that's okay.  Seoul can be their history, or maybe one day even their physical home.  They can make new memories and it can grow in their hearts as it has grown in mine.

But just like home to me is eating a $0.99 soft bean burrito with no enchilada sauce with a side of ranch dressing from Fiesta Ole while staring up into the snow capped mountains instead of munching on a crisp apple while watching hydro-boats skim the tops of the Columbia River from my birthplace in Washington state, home to my boys might be a stuffed pizza and a poorly-played baseball game rather than kimchi and urban hiking. No matter where it is, going home is always a really special feeling.

Fiesta Ole.....yummmmmmm.