I recently finished reading the book "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen. The book is about the story as a series of memories by Jacob Jankowski, a "ninety or ninety-three year-old" man who lives in a nursing home. Jacob is told what to eat and what to do. Jacob had the opportunity when he was young to deal with the hardships of losing his parents in a car accident and was led to drop out of school and jump on this random train. The train happened to be a circus train. He has a whole amazing story of what happens on the train from becoming the circus vet, falling in love with head trainers wife, and a bunch more things(I don't want to ruin the book for people that haven't read it.)
In the present Jacob is waiting for his family to show up at the nursing home and take him to the circus when its in town. His family has scheduling problems and get confused and overbook their plans and in turn are unable to take him to the circus. So Jacob being the crazy old man he is goes off out the door unstopped to the circus himself. He meets up with the manager Charlie and tells him of his experience with the circus because its one of the TOP circus tragedies in history. He begs Charlie to let him stay with him and go around selling tickets. Charlie agrees to this.
The last line in the book is what got me thinking of the reason for this blog post. The line reads "It's like Charlie told the cop. For this old man, this is home." Jacob's place of home is with the circus.
This got me thinking about where is home for me. When I was first conceived home was my mothers womb. When I was born is was in Manchester, CT. When I turned 5 up until age 19 it was East Hartford, CT. When I turned 19 and married a sailor it was Groton, CT. When I was 20 and he was discharged from the Navy it was going to be Orlando, FL and that changed to East Hartford, CT. Living in all of these places I can recall certain memories and honestly, none of them feel like home. They simply feel like a place.
I feel most at home when I am on my computer and the Internet. The contacts on my social networking sites, my messager lists are my neighbors. The videos on YouTube are my TV. Skype is my telephone. Yahoo news, AOL news, any news site really is my newspaper. Amazon and all the other sites I shop on are my mall. My Sim families are my vacation home. I can go to them and escape reality for as long as I need to.
Someone once said "Home is where the heart is" and I truly believe that. When you are passionate about something that's when you are really home. The physical building with an address is simply the outer shell that protects your home. When we go away from our family or friends if your a Military Significant Other, we often feel away from Home but really we are missing a piece of our passionate home because its not with us.
I hope these words have inspired and helped you in someway. Take them and find your own home and share it with the world and let its beauty shine. Even if its the chaos of a circus tent.
