Where are you from?

People crave connection.  Even in this instantaneous, digital age, people are constantly connecting.  We have Facebook friends, Twitter followers, Instagram to capture every moment, text messages to avoid conversation, & the list goes on.  Your phone can do virtually everything for you.  There is, however, the connection that draws a common ground between people:  our home.  Here in the South, the minute you meet someone, it seems the first question is always 'where are you from'?  That should be the simplest question to answer, but for me, it is not.  You see, I don't have roots.  I don't have a 'childhood home' to return to.  I was born in Ruston, Louisiana, but I never lived there.  Let me give you a quick tour of where I grew up:  Sterlington (elementary school), Grayson (junior high),  Ferriday (high school), & even a brief stint in Bastrop, but I was too young to remember my time there. If you aren't familiar with any of these towns, pull out that old school invention called a map & look them up.  I'll give you a clue:  it's all north of I-10.  I moved to Baton Rouge in the summer of 1999 to attend LSU & have never left.  I've been here so long that I call it home.  My parents have moved twice since I left,  & they currently reside in Rayville.  Again, 13 years have passed since I've lived in north Louisiana, but I can sometimes feel 'north Louisiana' come out in me: I will make some sweet tea & sit on my patio & listen to the wind.  I will cook some peas from my mother's garden & serve it with hot water bread.  Sometimes, I will even attend a country church where the Baptist Hymnal is still in the back of the pew, & the choir still wears robes. As a child, I didn't quite understood the phrase, 'home is where the heart is', but now, I grasp it completely.  At the end of the day, a house is nothing but a structure in which to dwell.  It could be bought, sold, or destroyed tomorrow.  It is the life that we build with our family & friends that connects us & makes a place our home.  The next time you ask where someone is from, I challenge you to dig deeper.  There is always a story worth sharing.