By now everyone has heard the old phrase “Home is where the heart is.” Generations ago, that phrase may have been quite appropriate. You see then, our hearts couldn’t be in too many different places. Beginning generations lacked the postal service. Many generations lacked the telephone. Other generations lacked television. Several generations lacked the internet, email, Facebook, MySpace, and the like. “Once upon a time” all we had was each other and what was immediately in front of us. Times have changed however.
There is so much now that captures our hearts. For generations we have had the luxury of sending and receiving mail. We’ve been privy to picking up the telephone and calling loved ones, no matter how far from us they may have been. During those times our only concern was ensuring that we didn’t talk too long or didn’t call too much, no matter how much we missed those that we adored. No one liked long distance phone bills, a term that my sixteen year old would contemplate with a great deal of confusion but no concrete conclusion. “Home is where the heart is.” can encompass a multitude of expressions now.
As cellular phones have made it a wonderful joy to afford long distance anywhere in the country, as long as your calls stay in the country, and Facebook enables us to find our most beloved kindergarten friends from over . . . well let’s not get carried away with the insignificant details of the number of years, we now find our hearts all over the place.
Chicago was my heart, and I left it in 2007 to move to Houston. While in Houston, I remember the very first time I realized that my heart was in Chicago. I was in Walmart trying to find the bread. Their aisles were so completely different than ours in Chicago. Although I had no doubt that their Walmart had existed long before ours had, Chicago had just recently started to sprout the infamous we have everything you could ever want or need, cheap stores. The ones in Chicago, the ones at home, just seemed to make more sense. Their layout was more rational and realistic. But in Houston, everything seemed to be all over the place, except the bread. I couldn’t find the bread for the life of me.
So there I stood, in the middle of some aisle crying, breaking down, because I couldn’t navigate my way around the unfamiliar familiar store to get a funky loaf of wheat bread. What did I do? I called my mother. Together we worked through my melt down and she began to remind me of how smart I can sometimes trick people into believing I am.
“Baby, where are you.” She spoke in her nurturing voice. Although she herself was going through the pain of her first born being gone for the first time ever.
“I’m in aisle four.” I replied through tears and other body fluids I dare not mention.
“No baby, I mean what is in the aisle that you’re in? Toilet paper, spaghetti, what.”
I began to look around and for the first time after hearing my mother’s voice I started to size up the store and actually get my footing. I noticed that the produce was in the front, yet to the side. Like many stores at home. The main difference is that the produce wasn’t along a wall like at home. It was actually its own aisle. I looked around and then decided to walk to the end of the aisle. It was then that I noticed the next few aisles were refrigerated aisles. So my assessment of the store began.
It took me and my mommy a good fifteen minutes to locate the bread. We were actually studying the layout of the store so that in the future there would be no more break downs.
I haven’t had a break down since. And slowly but surely, I’m finding my heart here in Houston.
When I arrived in Houston, I was a wife and a mother of three. I had no job. I knew no one.
I am now divorced, living with two of my sons, missing my family yet kept company by a few new and great associates, and I have a wonderful job. As I blog this month I thought it would be a great idea to find new places in Houston and tell you all about them, fixing two meals with one ingredient I like to say. I hate that saying “Killing two birds with one stone.”
As I make Houston my home, as I find my heart, I would be honored if you will join me.
Welcome to HTown!
Camisha aka Darien D. DeVon
