What do you call home?

What exactly is home, is it a place? Home is a word we often use without thinking of its meaning. But it is more a feeling than a place; it is a sense of attachment to something. Home means to be welcome and to feel welcome and that is where you are loved and waited for. Home is an emotion we connect with experience we had. But it is at the same time a place where nothing can befall us, a feeling of security and satisfaction.
In our lives we can have more than one habitation but only a few places we can call home. Some people are fortunate and have more than one place to call home and others don’t even have one.
Till now, I have moved with my family about six times and I’m able to connect to each place several things like special events, friends, smells, colours and feelings. But there are just two I can call home. The house where my parents and sisters are living is the place which I connect more with, thus that is my home. Now that I have left it, I realised what it is that connects me to it. I miss above all the people, the quietness, our garden and the twittering of the birds.
Wandering through the streets we soon realise the number of homeless living rough. For those homeless people the concept of ´home` doesn’t mean anything else. Maybe they would describe a place under a bridge as home but the feelings they connect with it are the same. A homeless person, who maybe shares his place with others, has his own understanding of the concept. Nevertheless it represents protection and a sense of welcome. If a homeless person feels rejected by society in his everyday life, he will search protection and security in his home, whatever he understands by it.
I know that for many people in the world my definition of what a home is like or should be is completely strange. There are a lot of people who don’t even know what this is, for example in countries where there is a constant heat of death and therefore a feeling of security and protection is impossible.
Others maybe have a safe habitation but wouldn’t call that home because a special person like a mother or a partner is missing. If you have to work for example in another city or even country where you have everything you need except this special person you won’t sense it as home.
My parents have lived in Germany for more than 20 years and they have their own house, a working place and their friends, but they still call their home country ´home` and hope one day to return, although they have everything they need to live and to feel at home.
All things considered, I would say that we can understand the concept of ´home` in different ways, depending on the place in the world and the circumstances we are living in. My conclusion is now that home really is where the heart is.