We’ve been “home,” back in the U.S. for a visit, for 5 weeks now. The reunion with our kids was sweet, the holidays with them poignant and hilarious. Visiting with my mother and extended family was precious. Lunch dates, dinner dates, coffee dates (finally a huge, refilled cup of coffee!), breakfast dates, shopping dates–time with friends was so very special–recharging us, refreshing us as we caught up on lives and families and jobs–and the weight we’d lost when in Luxembourg! Stretchy pants have never been so appealing!

So now we prepare to go home…to a home in Luxembourg, while we’re home in New York, after we made a trip home to West Virginia. Have I betrayed my home where the kids grew up, the home where I grew up, by saying maybe I’m ready to “go home” to  a tiny routine in a tiny apartment in a tiny country in Europe? How on earth do we balance life here with life there? How can we be so very grateful for the decades long friendships we have here, along with our beloved family, yet yearn for the months long friendships we’ve formed in Luxembourg?

Mr. Wonderful and me

What is home? Where is home? My permanent address, my habitat, my sense of belonging are some components in the home construction. Author Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote in Smithsonian Magazine (May 2012)  that home is a way of “organizing space in our minds.” If there’s no place like home, and home is where the heart is, and a house is not a home, and a home is built of love and dreams, and you can feel “at home” yet not be home…I’m wrestling with the organization of that space in my racing mind and my fickle heart.

But here’s what I do know: my home is with my dear husband, my French study buddy, my fellow adventurer, my best friend. We’ve made a home together in a trailer in West Virginia, funeral parlor in New York, a neighborhood in rural Georgia–why not an apartment in Luxembourg City? While we’ve been home, I’ve enjoyed my 24-hour Wegmans and Walmart, large and plentiful parking spaces, hearing English all around, and toting my monstrous dollar coffee from McDonald’s. I’ve cherished the time spent with family and friends.

Yet, we’re anticipating a return to cultural cacophony and feeling at home as we navigate the hurdles in our home across the sea–continuing to learn another language and the public transport system, continuing to forge friendships and connections, continuing to explore the history and beauty of another continent.  My heart is in this transition back to Europe, and yep…it’s true…home is where the heart is.