Jessica and I are pretty nomadic, having travelled extensively both before we met and since we’ve been together. When we moved to Edmond, it was with the idea that we would move back to San Diego after I graduated college. Oklahoma was only to be a short(ish) stay before moving back to beautiful SoCal for good.
Our first apartment at college was in OC’s Phase 1 (which no longer exists) while our “permanent” apartment was being rebuilt. We moved into Tinius Hall (the sophomore women’s dorm) and lived there for nearly 5 years while Jessica was the Resident Director there. When we moved from there, it was the most difficult moved I’d ever made since I’d lived there longer than any other place I’ve ever lived (well, tied for first). Once we bought our first home and “settled down,” we decided to consider each place we spent time “home”…for now.
During our nine-plus years together, home has been (not a complete list, and in no particular order):
- the parsonage at our church in San Diego
- a stateroom onboard the Queen Mary
- a mansion-like hotel room overlooking Disneyland for one night
- a sparse hotel room in Xi’an, China for three weeks
- a missionary’s apartment in Vitoria, Brazil
- the second floor of a missionary’s home in Lausanne, Switzerland
- a missionary’s house in Panama City, Panama
- a missionary’s house in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- an apartment in Ghent, Belgium
- a friend’s living room in Ft. Worth, TX
- a prison cell in Lucerne, Switzerland
- a friend’s floor in St. Louis, MO
- military housing at Whiteman AFB and hotels in Knob Noster, MO
- a six-day stay in Mercy Hospital in OKC
- countless hotels around the USA
- the Heart Center at St. Francis Hospital in Indianapolis
Tonight, it’s the last one on the list that is keeping me awake. It’s 12:23 2:29 a.m. and I can’t sleep. It may be the allergies, or Joanna coughing miserably in her bed, but really it’s because this is one of the rare nights that Jessica and I are apart. In our nearly 10 years together, it’s been less than a dozen times that we’ve spent the night apart, and those can almost all be attributed to my drill weekends with the Navy Reserve. (The longest exception was the three weeks Jessica spent in Belgium with Let’s Start Talking while I was in school.)
Tonight, Jessica is keeping watch over her dad after an unexpected heart surgery. He’s doing well, but Jessica vowed to not let him be alone and is spending the night in his hospital room while I’m at his house with Joanna. It’s one of the rare occasions that “home” doesn’t mean “home (together),” but it’s only for one night, and for the best of reasons.
It’s been said that “home is where the heart is.” Tonight, it’s the building where Joanna excitedly pointed out the big red one to me when we pulled up to visit Mama and Grandpa Joe.
