DRAMA QUEEN
NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Artistic license by Greg Triggs

Home is such an interesting concept. How does one define this elusive word? Young Dorothy Gale, in THE WIZARD OF OZ, tells us that there is no place like it, yet she offers no definition, just heartfelt ballads and some campy allusions. Perhaps home is just something we drop on a witch.

Home, we are told, is where the heart is. This is of course a metaphor or analogy – I forget which. It does not mean that home follows the literal heart and that when we are at the McDonald’s drive-thru ordering food that we are being counter productive to our home by virtue of the heart we are clogging with fat. No. Rather it means that home is where our affections lay.

That is the definition I prefer. As much as Martha Stewart or Christopher Lowell might want us to think differently, “home” is not about pretty colors, hemp woven hammocks and 650 thread count sheets. In the end home is about a place we love and those with whom we share our lives.

I recently moved to a swell one bedroom apartment in New York City. It’s about 700 sunny square feet with hardwood floors, a renovated kitchen, a gray marble bathroom and a rooftop deck. It’s near all the Broadway theatres, the major subway lines, wonderful restaurants and some of my best friends. It’s charming and frankly, just a little glamorous in a That Girl kind of way. I am living out one of my childhood fantasies. I have set out to conquer the big city from my own little place on West 51st Street.

But it’s not home yet. That distinction still belongs to Orlando and my cute little house in Audubon Park. Touristy, commercial, conservative Orlando with trailer parks posing as schools and clogged roadways is always going to be part of how I define home.

There are times when I am walking down Fifth Avenue, attending the theatre or at a party with fabulous, successful people, all of whom take their fabulousness very seriously and I feel out of place. I’m having a good time, I guess, but I am quite aware of the fact that I’d rather be at Sweet Tomato on Colonial Drive with the friends that I desperately miss. I want to go to the Parliament House and relive my thirtieth birthday party. I want to finally go to Gatorland, Splendid China or have the Holy Land experience. I want to be at home.

People underestimate Orlando. I know I did. I moved there without a single expectation past a steady paycheck and decent weather. It never felt like somewhere people stayed. How could anyone live in Disneyland? Life there was just going to be a working vacation and someday I would return to a more real life. Thirteen years later there was a wonderful memory on every corner and leaving was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.

But sometimes that is what has to happen. You move on. That is what makes home so precious. Sometimes you have to give it up and explore the rest of the world. You hire movers, have a yard sale, still manage to pack too many boxes and move on to a new adventure. You leave but part of you, your heart perhaps, stays behind.

Thank God you can visit for in spite of Thomas Wolfe’s opinion, you can go home again. I know Central Florida is just a quick trip to Orbitz.com away. That’s comforting but it’s hard missing the day to day things. I want to see the kids grow up. I want to be able to go on last minute lunch dates. I want to see fireworks in rush hour traffic. In time I will find the New York version. It just won’t be the same. It never is.

Be it ever so humble there is no place like Orlando.