Home is where?

This china cabinet still smells like Grandma Elizabeth's house. She died over 10 years ago. Sometimes I open the door just to smell it and remind myself.

Grandpa Jack likes to say a good parent gives their children roots and wings. (And then complain, I think unmeritedly, that his descendents got an extra-large helping of wings). I have been finding myself in this intersection repeatedly of late: roots and wings, wandering and settling, Kerouac and Thoreau.

A few weeks ago, an old man quoted Wendell Berry at me: "You know what's really radical? Find a place and stay there." George has been tending a forest less than five miles away from the home he was born for most of his adult life. "They pay me to do it, but I'd do it if they didn't. In fact, I don't think they could make me stop." Glinty eyes under crazy eyebrows, he's self-contained but not provincial. "I was at Haight-Ashbury in the 60's. Man, that was energy. Edgy. You know what's there now? A Ben and Jerry's. Ice cream."

Grandma Elizabeth lived alone on her farmstead for several decades after her husband died young. When we were cleaning the house after her death, many items came with typewritten notes detailing their origin and story. ("petticoat-pants. 1933".) She knew more about that house and the things it held and the land it sat on than I know about pretty much anything, or for that matter everything. Same for George and his trees.

But still I wonder: Where is my place? I've left all my homes, have grown discontent with them, or wanderlusty to go elsewhere. Will I ever have a house that smells like me? Will I ever be able to name all the trees around me? And would I be happy if I did?