I'm 30 years old and I've lived in nine different houses and 4 different states.   I haven't lived with my parents since I moved out to college when I was 18.  Even my summers at college were spent working at the medical school of my unviersity.  Undergrad housing was not included in the aforementioned number.  (Add about 7.)  

I have a difficult time when someone asks me where I'm from.  Where am I from?  I've lived in New York, Michigan, and Massachussetts, and am currently residing in Virginia.  How long does one have to live in a place in order to be from there?  Am I from New York, where my parents live, and where I've spent just about half my life, a portion of which I was too small to remember?  That was more than 10 years ago.  Or am I from Massachussetts, where I spent some of the most formative years of my post-bachelor's degree life?  I was only there for 4 years.  Would I say I was from Michigan, where I came from last, although I resented the constant snow for the short two-year stint I was there for my Master's?  Or even more complex, would I site my ethnic origin, even though I was born and raised in Brooklyn by immigrants who'd already lived outside of their country for a number of years?

I've resigned myself to saying, "I'm from here."  

What people don't know is that "here" is not Virginia.  It is not the short brick apartments with the large windows.  It is not these hills and these blue skies.  I know they don't know this because they ask questions like, "oh, where in?" and rattle me off names of counties and even major cities of which location I have no idea about.  My ignorance betrays me.  I'm an outsider.   

Here is not the home of "home is where the heart is."  Here is where my feet are, where my mission is, where my life's direction has turned to collide into.  Here is simply here, not a location but a slice of time, the here of roll calls and hand-raises, the here, perhaps, of what I would say when I am asked, "where are you?"  Here.  "I'm here."  This is also where I am from.  From here to...  God knows.  But as of now, the origin is right here.  

And what of my heart?  I don't know.  I suppose it's scattered all around the states, even broader than were I've lived; in California and Texas, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which should surely be considered it's own independent Commonwealth, let alone state.   I'm glad to reacquaint myself with pieces of it when I gather myself up and take a break from these 12 hour days to find what I left behind.  It's substantial, but home still calls me.

 And it's right here.