How Did I Get Here - Part 1

It's my favorite cuisine: German. Give me sauer braten, knackwurst and strawberry schaum torte.

It's a Dr. Watts hymn sung by earnest deacons at Sunday devotionals before service starts.

It's a Mighty Fortress sung at the right tempo at Reformation and Gott Ist De Liebe on Christmas.

It's sweet potato pie spiced to perfection on Thanksgiving.

All of that is home to me.

I asked my daughter what home was to her. Insightful enough to realize that home can be a place or a state of mind, she asked, exactly how I defined home.

I told her that her definition was up to her.

She called upon memories of when she was young. She said she saw them as sunny faded Polaroids flecked with orange shimmers. She giggled and remembered the time when she believed she led her preschool class in a Happy Feet dance on the playground. Then her face grew dark when she recalled awkward situations at summer camp in the years that followed.

Home is different for everyone -- whether good memories or bad.

Home is home.

Maybe the real question is: How did we get home in the first place?

I mean, you can't really understand everything about your definition of home if you don't understand how home ended up being "home".

It's a question I've been asking for a number of years and was fortunate enough to recently find out the answer.

Now, I'm able to dig a little deeper.

More on that later.

My earliest memory of home on 22nd & Keefe. We moved away when I was 3.
It was a duplex and my parents were the landlords, only a few minutes away from my dad's full-time job as a crane operator / iron pourer at one of Milwaukee's now-defunct manufacturers.