In a cold world
It’s a warm place
Where you know
You’re supposed to be
A million moments
Full of sweet relief
When the right one comes along

From the song When the Right One Comes Along

That song is actually about finding love, but the lyric defines home for me. In the southern U.S., most people would describe home as a two-story, four-bedroom house with a huge emerald green lawn, a two-car garage, and two parents and two or three kids living in it.

Having moved around quite a bit, home for me has been various sized apartments, ranch houses, dorm rooms, townhouses and condos. Home has been North, South and Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. As much as I sometimes don’t like it, home is something temporary to me. One constant of home was that it’s always been in the United States, and another — good home-cooked food.

Home cooking is the common thread that says home to me. No matter what my living conditions, home has always had good and plentiful food. The scent of certain foods even reminds me of other’s homes like my grandparents, my great grandma, or my Big Mama or Aunt Emily. The distinctive smells of food cooking is home.