home

"Andrew Largeman: You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone.
Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
Andrew Largeman: You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place."

-From Garden State, my favorite movie (Phil, did you really add this one to you Netflix queue? I was serious about this one...)

As I was traveling to Des Moines this afternoon, I was thinking about home. Ten years ago, I lived in a house with my mom, dad and sister. We lived in the house I had lived in since I was two years old. West Des Moines, Iowa was the only place I had known as home.

Now, I have lived for the majority of the past seven years in Lawrence, Kansas. First it was just my college town; my college town that I anxiously returned to from weekends at my home in Iowa. But my Iowa "home" had changed. My parents divorced right after I graduated high school. Too many memories existed in the house we lived in when we were a whole family. My parents sold it and move on to other places. These places I've visited on my returns to Des Moines on holidays and school breaks. But these places were not my home.

Now when I'm home I always try to stay with my grandma at least one night - this has been my family's home for something like 50 years. The paint is more colorful, the futon in the "pit" (office/spare bedroom/tv room) is brand new and probably much more comfortable then the four-inch mattress in the old hide-a-bed but it is still my the closest thing I have to my "home" when I'm in my home state.

Now, my home has become the college town where I have lived the past seven years. Semesters went by and I found the shortcuts through town, the weekends to avoid Target (move-in weekend!), my favorite coffee spot, favorite Monday night margarita stop, favorite bar on a Saturday night. Some friends have moved on, some of those friends I no longer speak to. But some friends became family.

Now I learn and love and grow in Lawrence. Once my college town. Now my home.

2007

As the calendar year changes, people tend to look back and reflect on the previous year. Yeah, 2006 was great. And it sucked. And the war got worse. We spent too much time on facebook. Sexy was back. We're still waiting on the world to change.
And as fun as it is to read top lists from last year and say "oh, I remember that!" I am much more excited about what is going to happen in this year. 2007. double-o seven. It's a big year for me! A total of EIGHT people I know are getting married. (1 cousin, 3 from work, 1 former coworker, 2 friends from high school and there's another person that I can't remember. That's what happens when everyone decides to get married.)
I'll also be finishing college. That one word, "college", encompasses so many things. Yes, it means completing 25 more credit hours (starting next Friday!!!) and receive a degree. But I've done so many other things that have really highlighted my experience. And still so much to do!
I get to finish up an amazing year with sua...(my fourth and final actually). I get to delve into a new leadership position with the homecoming steering committee. I will hopefully scrape up a few thousand dollars to study abroad. I'd like to intern at the statehouse in Topeka and make a path to a political campaigning job in '08...it looks like they'll be plenty of candidates to work for.
That's one year to do all that. I don't know if they'll be enough time. Wish me luck!