Home is where you park your bicycle.

Two weeks ago, I boarded a plane and flew to Colorado because home was calling me. Not for good, of course - I still have many travels ahead of me this year. But I thought it couldn't hurt to visit my family for a bit, enjoy the winter, and touch base with some friends. Maybe it would be good for the soul. So I came "home."

That I came "home" literally means that I flew into DIA and drove to Carbondale, to where, in June of 2013, I had moved my clothes, my books, my 3rd grade self portraits, and my bed. It is where my parents are now employed and my brother is enrolled in high school. My bike is parked in the garage, and my graduation picture sits on the mantel in the living room. It's where I sleep. But I can count the number of nights I've slept in this house. And I did - it comes out to about 34 nights total. Almost 5 weeks. A quarter of the number of nights I spent in Guatemala. Half of the number of nights I spend as a counselor at a sleep-away camp every summer. And that got me thinking. About all the different "homes" I've had, about what home means to me. And, consequently, when I get to thinking about something, I write about here for all of you to enjoy. So, home. Let's talk about it.

Last week I saw Abbie in Denver. Abbie and I grew up five blocks away from each other in Congress Park neighborhood right in the heart of Denver. On snow days we'd each walk 2.5 blocks to meet in the middle, then build a massive snow fort/cave/dreamland on the side of the road. She moved to Fort Collins when we were ten, and eight years later I moved to the mountains. On Friday we ate dinner at Tommy's Thai (if you haven't been there, please go, it's delicious) and realized that we were just around the corner from her house.

So we drove by and parked in front of her old driveway, in between the two "No Parking" signs on either side of the driveway that her dad had petitioned the city for because he kept getting blocked in. The notes he had us, eight years old at the time, write and put on the windshields of the perpetrators' cars just weren't enough. The light was on in Abbie's old bedroom. I asked her if she remembered when we had drawn with sharpies all over her bed sheets and the wall behind her bed when we were four years old. Of course she did - they had finally painted over it just before they moved out six years later. We noticed that the new residents had gotten a new mailbox. But the old basketball hoop was still there.

Next we parked in front of my old house on 11th and Clayton. The one that, almost exactly six months ago, still had my clothes and books and 3rd grade self portraits and my bike parked in the garage. No lights were on. The bushes by the front steps had been cut back, and the address block was moved upward. The wooden playground that my dad, Nicholas Bollen, and I had built when I was in 5th grade was still there, but the monkey bars were now growing vines and there was a hammock where the swings used to be. Abbie asked me if I remembered when I tried to do a backflip off the monkey bars and instead just fell straight on my head. Of course I didn't. But I remembered regaining consciousness and her standing over me yelling "That was awesome!" The old wooden bars probably weren't strong enough to support a daredevil child anymore.

And then there's all the trouble we got into that our parents still don't know about.

I told Abbie about my house in Guatemala. My dog, Kinak, whom a former volunteer had found in a trash can and adopted as her own. Kinak was passed down from one volunteer to the next, along with the house. My two roommates, Kayla and Patrick, who I could get into trouble with like I was ten years old again (no drawing on the walls, of course). How I could see the stars out my window when I was lying in bed. And how my clothes never dried because it was either rainy season, so it would begin to pour before I had time to take them off the line, or windy season, meaning that five minutes after I hung them up they would blow off again. There were always butter wrappers littering the backyard that Kinak had dug out of the trash can, and many of our pans were taco-shaped. We had to hold them on the stove so they didn't topple over.

When I think of homes that I've had, these three come to mind: Abbie's house on 13th and Adams, my house on 11th and Clayton, and Casa Bourbón in Residenciales. And of course there is my home that's not a house but a collection of cabins and dirty bathrooms where 6-15 year-olds pass their summers (talking about the JCC Ranch Camp, where I voluntarily spent ten of my summers and will return to this summer for my third year as a counselor). So what is a home to me? That's easy.

Home is where you eat food out of the fridge without needing to ask anyone. It's where you get into trouble with your friends. Where you can watch four episodes in a row of Grey's Anatomy. At the end of a long day at school or work, it's the reason you're excited to leave. Home is where you know all the secret tricks - like don't open the door too wide or else Kinak will bolt, and where Abbie's mom keeps the chocolate hidden. "Home is the place where," in the wise words of Robert Frost, "when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

Here's to more adventures this spring. And many more homes.

Eliza and Abbie, age 3, pick their noses and watch four episodes
in a row of Grey's Anatomy.