I can only remember being truly lost once in my life. I was five, and we had just moved into a new house. Being five, I didn’t really grasp the permanence of the situation.
One day after school, after the ten-block trek to “the new house,” I knocked on that unfamiliar door. I waited a bit, and knocked again. Nobody answered.
I evaluated my predicament and decided that my mother had finally come to her senses or was more reasonable than I had originally thought. I got it in my head that she had come around, had seen things my way, and had moved back home.
Light with joy, I gathered up my important papers, grabbed my plaid lunchbox, and with a great sense of victory and accomplishment took the first step on what I perceived to be the short walk home. Before long, it seemed I had been walking forever, and outside lights were starting to come on. I could not be outside after the lights came on. I was never told why, but I knew by the look on my mother’s face that only bad could come of it. At five, that was enough.
As the sky grew darker, I started to worry. I was headed in the right, of that I was sure. Why wasn’t I home yet? Would I never make it back? Would something in the dark get me? I sat down on someone’s front step to analyze my situation, lower lip thrust out and trembling at all the things I didn’t know.
But I knew one thing: I knew what home was. It wasn’t that new house, yard speckled with skinny, moping trees too small to climb on or even hang from. It wasn’t some place with no porch and no happy dogs to knock you down and wash you off when you came in from playing. It wasn’t bleak linoleum floors, steep, dark stairways, nor spooky corridors that lead to unknown rooms. Home was none of these things.
Home was 3835 East 61st Street, two blocks away from the biggest park in the city. Nestled in a neighborhood packed with kids I knew and trees I loved, dotted with affable, community dogs whose soulful stares could soften the hardest heart. Home had a grassy terrace in front, perfect for rolling down, and several hardy trees in back, ideal for climbing on or playing under. The yard in which I had played every day was full of great hiding places and nothing to hide from.
Home was hardwood floors to slip and slide on in sockfeet, doors you could slam without breaking, a cozy windowseat for kids to bedeck on holidays, when company came, and the most delightful staircase to bump down on, belly first (or feet first, depending on your personal preference).
Home was filled with neighbors who knew each kid and their respective pets by name: people who babysat and borrowed cups of sugar and shared tomatoes from their gardens. Home was warmth— plain, simple, and constant in the face of everything.
Nearly forty years have passed since I lived on 61st Street. Once I left that place, home became something else entirely: It wasn’t one place anymore, it could be anyplace. I saw that people lived everywhere in the world, in many different ways, but in many ways the same. Though their languages differed, their dogs and children spoke in familiar ways. I met these people, and I saw myself.
No matter where I go in life, I can choose to look back or to embrace whatever I find. No matter where I lay my head, I remember it takes so little to reach out and get more enjoyment from the here and now. Whether I take a trip to Mexico or walk over and stand on the hill up the street, I know—all illusions aside—that I’m as secure as I’ve ever been, because nothing is certain. And I remember to live my life. And as long as I never forget that, I can never feel truly lost again.