Years ago, my dad went to the woods surrounding our small town and brought back a redbud sapling and planted it at the rear of our house. Too close to the house it turned out, as Dad and I watched that sapling take root and then turn away from the house and grow out at a near ninety degree angle. I lived in that house every day of my childhood and returned to it often for another thirty years until my parents passed away.   

I haven’t planted a single sapling since that redbud with my dad. I’ve lived in big cities and small towns, in houses and in apartments, but I’ve never lived anywhere as long as I lived in my childhood home. And I’ve never lived in one place long enough to watch a sapling take root and grow into a full sized tree.  

“Where’s home?” I’m often asked as an expat in Mexico.

The sapling is my easy answer. But it may not be the true one.

The grandsons I’m living with now have parents who work in jobs that take them to different countries and different houses every few years.  The oldest, at nearly four, has already lived in three different countries and four different houses. His brother, at one, in two countries and two houses. They help me plant and water native plants that we’re growing in pots on our patio, but there will be no sapling planted here either. We’ll be gone in two years. 

“Where’s home?” I imagine my daughter asks herself at times. Wondering if her sons will grow up feeling rootless, with no sapling to return to.

I hope she knows what I’ve learned. That home can travel. That it’s not so much a place as it is the people in a place.  

Some day I’ll go back to that white frame house that was home to me for so many years, and I’ll likely walk out back looking for the redbud tree that grew away from the house. But what I’ll really be looking for is Dad.