What does home mean?

It is a question I have been writing about for years. Long before I published Anywhere But Here, I was trying to explain why certain places stayed with me while others never quite felt like mine.

In a blog post from 2010, I wrote about moving often as a child. Houses, cities, and schools could feel temporary. But my grandparents’ homes were different. In Nucla, there were cousins to run with, bread baking in Grandma’s kitchen, and people gathered around the table to talk and play cards. In Louisiana, there were figs and pears from the trees, the sound of cicadas, and something wonderful cooking inside.

Those places gave me a feeling I spent years trying to reproduce.

In 2016, I returned to the question and wrote a line that still feels true to me:

Home is the place where one lives permanently in their mind.

Then I tried to capture what that meant.

Home

To me, home is…

drinking fresh cow’s milk from aluminum cups

eating trout cooked over the campfire

homemade pecan pie

the smell of baking bread

cows in the field

figs from the tree

endless games of softball, jacks, and war

homemade butter spread thick on homemade bread

panfried steak from a cow named Beefsteak

Grandma saving the turkey carcass from Christmas to make gumbo for New Years

canned figs and strawberry jam

lilacs

the sound of cicadas at night

moving boxes

playing outside until dark

Grandma crocheting while she watched her shows

Atlanta Braves baseball

lime jello with pineapple

leftovers in old hubcaps to feed the cats

the smell of hay

my aunt’s treehouse and calling her on the phone from the house

gardens

Lava soap

fun with my cousins

the sound of airplanes flying over

green apples

whistling with blades of grass

swinging statues

country music

roller skating

Grandma’s attic full of treasures

the needlepoint horse which lives in my kitchen because it was in grandma’s kitchen

riding in the back of the truck or in the “back back home”

kickball

playing cards

John Wayne movies

chicken enchilada casserole

pancakes for dinner

sitting around the table in the kitchen

“Look out Ned, we’re headed for the bushes!”

The Places Michelle Carries

Reading that piece again, I can see why the idea of home matters so much in Anywhere But Here.

Michelle Martinez has spent ten years building a life that moves. She follows the rodeo circuit, takes photographs, and makes a home in her RV. That home belongs to her. She chooses when the doors close and where she goes next. She has made room for comfort, too: a quilt she stitched herself, candles, and familiar routines.

There is something powerful in being able to create a space where you feel safe.

But when Sylvia’s disappearance brings Michelle back to Albuquerque, she discovers how much of her life there she still carries.

After speaking with Bobby for the first time in years, Michelle cannot sleep. Her concern for Sylvia is tangled with everything seeing him again has stirred up. Her romantic feelings for Bobby are still connected to the pain and trauma that caused her to leave, and being near him brings both the warmth and the hurt closer.

Her mind moves through memories of Bobby and the Calderon family: a shell necklace from a trip to San Diego, someone standing beside her when she needed support, the smell of green chile after dinner. She remembers stars over Fenton Lake and the feeling of being close to someone when the world seemed manageable.

These are the small things that make a person or a place feel like home. They may look ordinary from the outside. From the inside, they can mean everything.

Albuquerque holds the experiences Michelle wanted to escape and the people who helped her survive them. Bobby belongs to that history, too. Remembering his kindness and allowing herself to feel the possibility of closeness again means approaching a time in her life she has spent years keeping at a distance.

That is part of what makes coming home complicated for her.

Home Around the Table

Food runs throughout Anywhere But Here because it is woven into Michelle’s memories of belonging. Mama Calderon’s cooking, the smell of chile, and the family gatherings all help give that belonging a familiar shape.

For Michelle, remembering the Calderon house means remembering the people inside it and the meals they shared. The smell of green chile lingering after dinner carries the warmth of that household. Mama’s cooking is part of the care Michelle receives, part of being included in the everyday life of a family.

Those ordinary moments matter. A place at the table. Familiar food. People gathering, talking, and spending time together. Over time, they become memories she can return to even when she is far away.

I recognize that connection in my own life. Both of my grandmas were phenomenal cooks, and both of my parents taught me to cook. Many of my favorite childhood memories revolve around food and the kitchen table. When I think of home, I remember what was cooking and who was there.

Looking at my poem now, I can see how much of it is food: bread, butter, trout, pecan pie, figs, gumbo, pancakes for dinner. Each one brings people and places with it.

That same connection lives in Michelle’s story. Mama Calderon’s cooking and the family gatherings give her something lasting to carry. Years later, those memories still help her recognize what home felt like.

Leaving and Belonging

I understand the feeling of carrying a place long after leaving it. The smell of hay can take me back to Nucla. Cicadas can bring back Louisiana. A meal, a song, or an object in my kitchen can put me beside someone I miss.

My life and Michelle’s are different, but that understanding finds its way into my writing. Places hold memories. So do people. Sometimes a kitchen table stays with us longer than the house around it.

Michelle’s years on the road matter. She has built a life of her own, and there is freedom and purpose in it. Her return asks her to consider what still connects her to the life she left—and whether she can make room for those connections as the person she has become.

During that sleepless night after seeing Bobby again, she recognizes something her years away could not resolve:

“Distance is not the same as healing.”

We can leave a city. We can change our surroundings and build new routines. Understanding what we carry may take longer.

For Michelle, the people who offered her safety remain part of her idea of home, even when remembering them also brings her close to painful experiences. Her feelings for Bobby make that especially difficult. She has come back because Sylvia is missing, and now she has to navigate feelings she could keep at a distance while she was away.

When I wrote about home in 2010, I ended by describing my own kitchen, filled with cooking, laughter, and family. After years of wondering how to create that warm feeling, I felt I had finally come home.

In 2016, I ended with this:

To me, home is a kitchen full of good food and people I love.

That feeling lives in Anywhere But Here, too—in Mama Calderon’s cooking, in the family gathered together, and in the warmth they offer Michelle as she struggles to understand where she belongs.

What does home look like in your mind? Is it a place, a person, a sound, or something cooking in a kitchen you still remember?