This month’s assignment in my writing circle was to write about what place we would be if we were a place. Here’s what I submitted:

If I were a place, I’d be the earthy smell that blows through the screen when spring warms the Indiana soil. I’d be the cool feel of the linoleum as I nap the afternoon away on Grandma’s floor during a scorching Kansas summer. Hollyhocks nod on the other side of the screen door and grasshoppers fiddle their songs in the dry weeds. I’d be the mist that plays with the Spanish moss in a Charleston garden or obscures the valley in the Smoky mountains. I’d be a sunrise in the Oklahoma hills, the sunset on the Wabash where it widens around New Harmony. All the places I’ve lived and loved blend together when I try to pick one place from the rest.

It just dawned on me that I don’t need to imagine what place I’d be because I am a place. I’m the place my nomadic children call home. Home isn’t this house or even this city or state. Home is me as in, “Mama, I’m coming home.” I’d never thought of that before.