Over the past five years I have traveled frequently between my hometown of Toledo and my new home in Pittsburgh. During this time I believe that I have become an expert on what the true meaning of home is.

While clichés would have you believe that home is simply where your heart is, I contest that it is so much more than words could ever possibly describe.  Attempt as I might to define it, home ultimately is what you make of it.  What follows is my personal definition of home:

I get the feeling of home when I’m talking to my father every morning when I walk out the door to go to work.  I get the feeling of home whenever I hear the distinctive song that plays on my iPhone each time my parents decide to give me a call.  I feel home each time I receive a letter or a holiday card from my mother wishing me well and reminding me of the eternal bond between a child and their parents.  I feel home whenever I look around me and see the dresser my dad and I built together or the weird combination bookshelf, drawer and trashcan holder that I architected one night when I was extremely bored.

Home is what I see each time I look to the west and am reminded of the life I left only slightly over the horizon. Home is that sinking feeling in my stomach whenever I hear the word “Toledo” muttered on the news or by someone standing close by.  Home is that little dot on the weather map that reminds me every time I see it that I’m from that speck of land.  Home is something that, as much as you try to miss it, lingers on and on in your heart like a stain on your favorite shirt that simply will not go away.

Home is something I’ve tried to forget when thinking about those I’ve lost who I knew from childhood.  Home is something I’ve been forced to remember when thinking about the experiences that have made me who I am today.  It’s a terrible inconvenience sometimes, home is, but you find yourself thinking about it at the oddest hours of the night.

Home is the feeling I get when I pack up my car and tell my folks that I’m coming to see them.  Home is the clean sound of my car’s ignition that signifies the beginning of a tiring four hour journey from the hills of Pennsylvania to the plains of northern Ohio.  Home is the rough sound of the rumble strips underneath your tires outside of the toll plaza entering Ohio.  It’s the feeling of looking across the farmland for miles and seeing every star in the sky, knowing that eventually they will all go dark again as soon as you enter the next city.  Home is the memories that those clear nights bring.  It’s the “interstate 75 - 2 miles” sign that passes quietly overhead and the outrageous but somehow tolerable $11.00 toll for exiting the Ohio Turnpike.

Home is seeing the twinkle of the somewhat thin Toledo skyline in the distance.  It’s Phillips avenue, and the memories of all the shows my old band played up and down that road.  It’s the left hand turning signal and the newly built complex on the corner that destroyed “the field”, a forbidden place that we always went as children.

Home is the slow right turn onto the street I grew up on.  It’s the shallow left and the quick right that places me in the driveway I grew up playing hockey on in my rollerblades.  It’s the embarrassing dents in the siding above the garage door that remind me of my silly attempts to wrist shot one of my several plastic orange pucks over the house.  It’s the tree in the back yard that swallowed so many of them when I finally realized I could do it.

Home is the strange hiss of the spring on the side door as it closes behind me; and the chipped paint on the garage floor.  It’s the silent growling of Mike, my Jack Russell Terrier greeting me as unfamiliar company followed by the awkward clicking of his happy dancing along the kitchen floor when I open the door and see him.  It’s the smiles of the man and woman sitting at the kitchen table that makes it all complete.

Home is the warm hugs of my parents who I can tell missed me that inevitably remind me that I’m home.  It’s the smell of the air around me which for 19 years was all I knew.

I contest that home, in fact, isn’t where your heart is.  Home is where your heart belongs; feels safe; feels free.  Home is what you can depend on when everywhere else on Earth has turned against you.  It’s the haven of your innermost strength and keeper of all of your most embarrassing secrets and fondest of memories.  Home is your first love, your first kiss and your first heartbreak manufactured into a package of unforgiving memories.  Home is what you take with you wherever you go.  Home is your heart.