I don’t remember where I heard the line, “Home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in,” but it stuck in my mind. Not a very warm image of home, but when I was younger, I didn’t have warm feelings about home. It was where I had to live, not where I wanted to be. Arguments, yelling, sour smells, and boring routines were what I associated with home. It was a place I was itching to get away from—not just the family and the house, but the whole damn town. I knew too many people, and too many people thought they knew me. I felt hemmed in and wanted to get out and see the world—and I did, eventually.

My parents wanted me to go to college after high school. I was tempted, just to get away, but I had enough of school and couldn’t face another four years of it, even if I could get accepted. That’s not to say I was thrilled about working at the convenience store. It was a dead-end job, and I knew it. I guess that’s what made military service attractive. I was nineteen when I signed up for the army. It wasn’t out of patriotism or any high-minded feelings about service, but for purely selfish reasons. I needed to get away, but had no place to go. If I didn’t break out, I was afraid I’d end up spending my whole life in the same stifling place where I was born, and I couldn’t take that. I wanted to make some progress in my life, and I measured progress by how much distance I could put between myself and my place of origin. The military was a stepping stone, a way to get out of the rut I was in. It was worth trading a couple years for a ticket to someplace else.

I didn’t have any qualms about going to war if I had to, but the ‘80s were relatively peaceful years. In that period between getting out of Vietnam and 9/11, there wasn’t much likelihood of having to fight. Military service was more of a career choice than a call to duty, for me. I was stationed in Texas the first year, and life was different from anything I’d experienced before. The change of scene and routine felt good. I got into shape physically and that boosted my self-confidence. Living cheek by jowl with guys from all over the place was a real eye-opener. Lots of stuff the brass made us do didn’t make sense, but following orders was easy. We just did what we were told. When we were away from the base, our only thought was to have a good time. We’d go out, get boozed up, and look for girls. Then we’d go back to our regimented life style. It was nice not having any responsibilities .

I was stationed in North Carolina the next year, and by then the routine started wearing thin. I knew I wasn’t going to make a career of it. The good thing was that they trained me in electronics, and when I got out, I was able to find work right away. It didn’t faze me that the job was in Omaha. There was no particular place that I wanted to be. Computers were appearing all over and it was a great time to be working in technology. There were lots of job opportunities for someone with a little know-how. In the following years, I worked all over—Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Austin, St. Louis, Denver and Phoenix, you name it. I even got to travel to far-flung places like Amsterdam, Santiago and Seoul.

I went back home occasionally to see my folks. Once I had broken away and no longer felt trapped, I didn’t mind going back to the old town. Everything felt familiar there. I knew every street. Mostly everything had stayed the same, and if a new building went up, I could picture what had been there before. When I walked into a shop, people still greeted me by name. There was a big difference between home and the places I lived after leaving, which always felt temporary and alien. I traveled around so much, I often confused one place with another. Once, after searching for a particular restaurant in Denver, I realized after a while that what I was looking for was in Austin. I was never tempted to put down roots anywhere, and didn’t think of the places where I happened to be working as home.

During one of my regular visits back home, I met Carrie. Met her again, I should say. We went to high school together, but I hadn’t seen her in years. I was at the diner with my folks, and even before we sat down, we were arguing, as usual. That was our mode of communication. I was feeling cross and didn’t even look up when a waitress handed us menus. Then I heard my mother say, “How are you, Carrie? And how’s your Mom doing?” I raised my head and saw a pretty girl with a sweet smile. It took me a second to connect her with the teenager I used to know. When I asked her what she’d been up to, she pulled up a chair, seated herself primly on the edge of it, and proceeded to tell me. Now that’s something that didn’t happen in the big cities I’d gotten used to. The staff at those restaurants was too professional, if that’s what you call it when employees act like automatons pretending to be human beings. It was different here. Carrie wouldn’t get into trouble for sitting down at a customer’s table and chatting for a few minutes. There were good things about the old town I hadn’t appreciated before.

Carrie told me how she’d graduated from college back east and gone on to graduate school, but came home to be with her mom when her father died suddenly. Before she rose from her chair and got around to the business of taking our orders, I asked her to a movie that evening and she said yes. For the rest of that visit, I spent as much time with her as I could. I liked her a lot. She was smart and sweet and down to earth. When I went back to Seattle, my life felt empty, and the cloudy skies and endless rain got to me. My work wasn’t very exciting, and the memory of Carrie’s smile stayed with me. We started spending time talking on the phone, and I went back home to visit more often.

The old town was beginning to feel like home again, but in a good way, and I begrudged the time I spent away. I was in love with Carrie, of course, but I was also kind of in love with the place itself. It was all one package. When I went back to visit Carrie, I felt that I was home, and my time on the job felt like an onerous business trip. Our ridiculous long distance relationship went on for about a year before I came to the obvious conclusion that what I wanted to do was marry the girl I loved and move back home, the place I used to be so eager to get away from. Once I decided that was what I wanted, it wasn’t so hard to work it out. I had some money saved up from past jobs. I could find odd jobs and, if necessary, go off for an occasional short-term gig to earn some extra income. Carrie and I got married in ‘97 and bought a nice old house within walking distance of Carrie’s mother and my folks’ house. Three years later, our son, Tommy, was born and two years after that came a baby girl we named Annie. With Carrie and the kids there, our house felt like the center of the universe to me, the only place I could imagine calling home.

Things were going well. We had a good life together. The kids were growing up and doing fine at school. We had plenty of friends, and played an active part in the community. Not long after Annie was born, Carrie started writing pieces for the local paper, and I got a full time computer-based job with a financial institution that allowed me to work from home. I didn’t have to do any more traveling, except for family vacations, which I relished. There were problems and misfortunes as there are in every life, of course. Carrie’s mother, who had been ailing for some time, passed on. My parents died unexpectedly in an auto accident. Carrie and I had our spats and there were a few scary medical emergencies with the kids. But by and large, we were happy and content with our lot. The life we had was just what it was supposed to be. Until a few months ago.

I’m finally coming around to the story I wanted to tell you in the first place. I intended only to give you some background information and ended up telling you my whole life story instead. Oh, well. What happened was that I lost the job I’d held for more than twelve years because of a merger and resulting redundancy of positions. Change is always hard, especially when you’re older and settled in your ways. Our financial situation wasn’t dire, but the unexpected change disturbed our plans a bit. We needed to put money by for the kids’ education and we had been looking forward to a vacation in Europe. Carrie, as always, was a rock, and told me not to worry and we’d figure things out.

By coincidence, while we were working our way through this rough patch, I got an email from someone I used to work with. He’d recently started his own company and it was doing well. He needed a systems manager and thought I’d be perfect for the job. He urged me to consider moving to northern California to join his team. Had he contacted me a year or even a couple of months earlier, I wouldn’t have considered his proposition. I was happy in our home and wasn’t interested in going anywhere. But now I was in a difficult situation and was tempted, and not just for financial reasons. Losing my job, even though it was through no fault of my own, was a blow. Where I was once essential, I was no longer needed. I lost a little bit of my purpose in life, a bit of my identity. That was the real reason I found my friend’s offer so appealing.

Carrie and I talked it over. I laid out the reasons why we should take the plunge. I’d make a lot more money than I’d been earning, and the work would be more interesting. We’d be moving to a better climate and a very beautiful area. The schools were rated higher, and there would be great opportunities for the kids. Our life was getting a little stale and change would do us all good. Our parents were gone and there was nothing keeping us where we were. The arguments were plentiful and powerful, and Carrie seemed to agree with me that the offer came at a providential time. It was meant to be. The move would be difficult because we had accumulated so much stuff over the years, but it was time to sort through our belongings anyhow and get rid of things we no longer needed.

We put our house on the market. The broker advised us to remove some of our furniture to make the house more appealing, but I refused to live in a state of chaos until a buyer was found. She capitulated and said, “Okay, if that’s the way you want it. I’m just warning you that some prospects will be turned off and won’t see the potential of the place that they might if it was more sparsely furnished.” I acknowledged that she was probably right, but that it was worth a shot, and if it didn’t sell quickly we could always try her approach later. Carrie and I were in complete agreement that selling the house and moving to California was the sensible thing to do, but seeing the “For Sale” sign go up brought tears to our eyes. There was no way to say goodbye to the place where our whole life together was lived without thinking that we were about to lose something irreplaceable, and that something important was coming to an end. But we had a lot of work to do, and there wasn’t time for sentimentality.

If you’ve ever sold a house, you know what an ordeal it is. People come around at all hours and look in every corner of your house. We tried to stay away whenever a showing was scheduled, and that was very disruptive and inconvenient. When two weeks had gone by and there were no bites, I figured the agent was right and we needed to start emptying out the house. But one evening when Carrie and the kids were out, I got a phone call. A guy who identified himself as a real estate agent said, “I have a client who wants to take a look at your property. I know it’s late, but I wonder if we could swing by this evening.” He told me to stay home and not alter my plans on account of the showing, so I told him to come on over.

When the doorbell rang, I invited my guests to come in and look around. I showed them around the ground level, answered a few questions, and sent them upstairs to explore on their own. Meanwhile, I sat myself down at the dining room table with a nuked cup of coffee and a newspaper to while away the time as they went about their inspection. When they came back downstairs, the taller of the two, the client, had a few more questions for me. I answered as honestly as I could, and we stood chatting a few minutes longer. He was an affable fellow and I enjoyed talking to him, but didn’t expect anything to come of the visit. I was surprised, therefore, when I got a phone call from the broker the next day saying his client wanted to make an offer on the house.

It was a little below our asking price but more than we actually expected to get. Furthermore, it appeared that the prospective buyer might be willing to to buy some appliances and furnishings. That was good news not only because it vindicated my strategy of showing the house as-is, but it solved one of our biggest problems—what to do with all our stuff. We didn’t have a place, yet, and the less we had to haul with us or try to sell at a garage sale, the better off we were. Things were working out better than we could have hoped. Eli, that was the buyer’s name, came by to discuss what items he would like us to leave in the house. We hoped he’d take all the appliances and maybe one or two pieces of furniture.

Carrie set out some cakes and tea and we sat down to discuss matters. When we asked Eli what he would like us to leave behind, he said, “I just love this place. As soon as I walked through the door I felt at home. I’ve been living abroad and don’t own any furnishings of my own, so I need everything and would be happy to compensate you for anything you leave here.”

Carrie and I exchanged a glance. It was too good to be true. Not only wouldn’t we have the headache of moving our things, but we’d have extra cash for furnishing our new place. Our silence must have worried Eli because he went on to say, “No, of course I don’t expect you to just walk out the door and leave all your belongings. What I meant is that I like the way everything looks, and whatever you choose to leave behind, I’d be very happy to buy.”

“Do you think you’d like the sofa and chairs?” Carrie asked, pointing to each of the items in turn. “And how about the credenza?”

“Oh, definitely,” Eli answered without hesitation. “And the beds, nightstands, dressers and desks, too,” he added. “You see,” he explained, “I hate shopping, and I’m terrible at decorating. It would save me a lot of time and aggravation to be able to move into a place that I already know suits me.”

“What about the plants?” Carrie asked gesturing towards some large pots near the dining room window. We knew we couldn’t take them with us. “Want them too?”

“Oh, yes, they fit in so perfectly, and I would never be able to find the right plants on my own. They’re thriving here. I just hope I can keep them alive,” Eli said.

“Oh, they’re very easy to maintain,” Carrie reassured him. “I can jot down some instructions if you want.”

“That would be perfect,” Eli said. “Of course, I don’t want you to leave anything behind that you want to keep, just what you don’t want to take.”

Maybe it was a mischievous streak in my nature that made me want to push Eli’s complaisance to the limit, and I asked, “I suppose you’d like the bookcases.” He nodded his head. “And how about what’s on them? The books and knickknacks and all?” I continued.

Eli smiled and said, “That would be terrific. Leave it all except for the personal items you want to keep, and I’ll increase my offer by $50,000, if that sounds fair. You can even leave the dogs and cats if you have any,” he said with a laugh.

Carrie and I laughed too. Eli was such a nice fellow we couldn’t help liking him. We couldn’t believe our luck in finding a buyer who would make our move so easy. I had been dreading the thought of going through everything we had accumulated over the years and figuring out what to do with each item. I was also pleased that most of our possessions would remain intact in their natural habitat, as it were, instead of being dispersed to various locations. It would be sad to see things we selected for our home with love and care end up in a landfill. We could take whatever we wanted and leave the rest, and get more for it than it was all worth.

A month later we had the closing and signed a batch of papers along with the stipulation that we would leave behind most of the furnishings and contents of the house. Carrie and I and the kids went out to the best restaurant in town that night to celebrate. I felt almost giddy about the transaction, and Carrie seemed quite relieved at how things had worked out. The kids sulked. They hated leaving their friends and their old lives behind, and dreaded being the new kids in town in a new school. We tried to cheer them up. I said, “Sure, it’ll be a little hard at first, but you’ll be right at home in no time and you’ll love it there.”

That night I had a rather unsettling dream. What I remembered of it when I awoke was that I was invisible, like a ghost, and nobody could see or hear me. I felt powerless because I couldn’t affect anything that was happening around me. I got out of bed, went into the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee. Everyone else was still asleep and it was eerily quiet. It would be our last day in the house. Everything was packed and in a few hours we would step out the door, close it behind us, and probably never enter through it again.

The uneasy mood of my dream seeped into my thoughts as I sat there. Beyond the natural difficulty of adjusting to a major change, I felt an overwhelming sense of loss. I wasn’t relinquishing just some material artifacts, but a part of who I was. I could imagine old friends and neighbors coming by and visiting as usual, even though I was no longer there. They’d be visiting someone else who had assumed my place. Eli wasn’t simply taking over my possessions but, in a way, my identity. He would, in a sense, become me. And then who I would be? I knew a few people who had to deal with identity theft, and I understood it wasn’t just a matter of inconvenience and financial loss, but the trauma of knowing that a stranger had appropriated your life. Eli didn’t steal anything from me. I voluntarily and even happily handed it over to him, but still ….

I finished my coffee and tried to shake off my misgivings. A brand new phase of my life was starting, a new adventure, and I couldn’t let maudlin thoughts interfere with moving forward. I looked up and saw Carrie standing in the doorway, and guessed she was feeling the same way, so I went over to reassure her. I tried to put my hands on her shoulders and draw her to me, but she fended me off. “I need to tell you something,” she said.

I waited without saying anything. After a long silence, she continued. “The kids and I have been discussing it and we came to a decision.”

“What kind of decision?” I asked, puzzled.

“We’re not going with you,” she replied, and stood there looking down at her feet.

“What do you mean?” I laughed. “Of course you’re coming with me. Where else would you go?”

“Nowhere,” she said, simply but firmly. “Eli says we can stay.”