Home
What is home?
Over the years, I’ve called more than thirty-three different front doors “home.” Since Tia and I got married, we’ve lived in nine homes, soon to be ten. Yet, believe it or not, the longest we’ve ever stayed anywhere has been right here on McIntosh Drive in Prescott, Arizona—the home we built together in 2022.
My first childhood home burned down more than twenty years ago. Still, every time I’m back in Washington State, I drive by where it once stood. It isn’t even there anymore. So what am I looking for? Am I hoping to be taken back there, or trying to carry something from it forward with me?
I look for the tree that once held a tire swing. I glance far behind the lot, wondering if the pond is still tucked away back there. I remember the outbuilding with big windows that became my mom’s little hair salon—and the day I ran through it, butt naked, shouting, “Everybody, look at me! I’m NAKED!”
My mom has another memory of that same salon, its big windows framing several clients in their chairs, looking out toward the back porch—where there I was once again, butt naked, peeing off the edge like it was my stage.
When we say we’ll miss a space, it’s never the walls or the roof. It’s the life that fills it. It’s the pure joy of watching Jack and Grayson and Griffy grow up together. It’s them piled on the couch watching Cal Raleigh crush his 60th home-run—Grayson pointing at the TV, shouting at the top of his lungs,
“OH YEAH BABY, CAL RALEIGH, THAT’S MY… PERSON!!!”
Home is just the space that holds your people.
Home: church.
Home: conversations at school drop-off.
Home: weekend dinners with neighbors.
Home: ice cream on Sundays with best friends.
Home: a little boy embarrassing his mom by pulling down his drawers and peeing in the driveway.
Sure, I have moved all over the world.
But when someone asks who I root for, I am Pacific Northwest through and through.
“Mariners. Cal is our person.”
When someone asks me where is home?
“Prescott. Those are our people.”
Go Well & Stay Well
Nathan Burlingame
