Sometimes it is difficult for me to say for sure where my "home" is. The first song I memorized was "Home Is Where I Hang My Heart" when I was two years old. So does that mean that home is where I hang my heart? Or does it mean that the place where I hang my heart is the place that becomes home?
My address has been Ringgold, Georgia since 1986. Yet we don't really live in Ringgold. We live in Catoosa County several miles outside of the city of Ringgold. But when asked I say that I live in Ringgold, Georgia.
When asked where I'm from, while out of town, until recent years I have said "I grew up in Enterprise, Alabama, but I live in Ringgold, Georgia". Several years ago I dropped the Enterprise story and just said I was from Ringgold. But that's not exactly accurate either. Since most people have never heard of Ringgold, Georgia, most of the time I have said, "I'm from Ringgold, Georgia just across the state line from Chattanooga." That usually satisfies people for where I'm from (but what do I do about those first nineteen years in Enterprise? You know, "home". Better left unsaid).
The most homesick I have ever been in my life was when I sold books door-to-door in Kentucky the summer out of high school. For the first time in my life I understood the "sick" part of homesick. The summer of '71 "You've Got a Friend", "So Far Away", and "How Do You Mend a Broken Heart" were all popular. None of the songs cured my sickness, but sources of comfort for a devout Southern Baptist teenager were very limited.
I shared the next most homesick experience with my bride when we moved in 1977 from our home of Jasper, Alabama to Louisville, Kentucky for me to continue my music education. We went to a movie our first weekend in Louisville. After the movie we got in our car. I asked her if she was ready to go home. We both cried.
We spent this past weekend in Birmingham, Alabama visiting lifetime friends. Although we lived there three years, I can't say that it was ever home for either one of us. And when I say "we" lived there, this was before we were married. We weren't even dating most of that time. She lived in her dorm at Samford University and I lived down the hill in mine. She was in pharmacy school and I was in music school. I saw her in our choir and we shared a ride to Jasper on weekends. I was on the staff of a church and she lived and worked there. This commuting arrangement worked well for both of us.
After residing on weekends at the M&M Motel for several months, my church moved a mobile home from Forrestdale and anchored it in a trailer park in Jasper. Since home is where you hang your heart, that trailer in Jasper, Alabama was where I lived. Although I spent twice as much time in Birmingham, I considered Jasper to be my home.
Yesterday my wife and I walked around the Samford campus for quite a while. Neither of us realized until my she did the math that we were celebrating the 40th anniversary of our graduation together there in May of 1976. We visited the pharmacy school, the music school, the chapel where our choir performed three times a week and for other special occasions. We strolled through the student center. Then we walked up the hill to her dorm. We couldn't visit my dorm. My dorm is not a dorm any more. About twenty years ago it was glorified by the university into the school of religion complete with a massive dome. My room, which I saw several years ago, is now a small classroom in the religion building. Who knows, maybe as much good sleep goes on now in that room as did back then.
While we were visiting with our friends in their home in Birmingham, I noticed some very familiar books on the bookshelf in front of me. These books published by the Southwestern Publishing Company, Nashville, Tennessee were among the books I sold the summer of 1971. Since I carried only samples in my case that summer, I had never read the actual books. The only time I had seen these books was the week I delivered them and I was too busy and exhausted to read anything. I pulled one of them off the shelf and read some of it. It was more entertaining than informative. I wonder how many of those people in Kentucky have actually read any of them? If so, I hope that they were at least as entertained as I was.
So is home where we hang our hearts or does where we hang our hearts become our home? I guess everybody has to decide that for themselves. I will say that this afternoon heading north on I-59 there was no doubt about it. Not only was Birmingham in my rear view mirror, but I was distancing myself from Enterprise and Jasper as well. I was not homesick at all. I have hung my heart in Ringgold, Georgia. Well, close enough to Ringgold anyway. I was headed home.
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