Home—can anyone define that? For some, it’s simple: Where the heart is. Cross-stitch that and hang it on a wall. For the rest of us, it’s a negation: Where I’ve never been. Perhaps it is, after all, that one place to which we can never return. I left my home and grew up, carrying my child self everywhere I went, full of longing and fear and memory. I couldn’t stay there and survive, but now Granny is gone, and I can’t drive to her house and eat the best chicken and dumplings you ever had.
