At this very moment I’m sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Cedar Park, Texas. I’m about 20 minutes from the site where Kara and I are building a house—the home we’re aiming to move into sometime over the next seven months. A long time to be patient, we’ve discovered. Especially since we’ve already been patient since November as it is.

We like Cedar Park. The area seems clean and safe, there’s a sort of calming energy to it. There’s a very “home” vibe here, already. House or no house.

This sort of thing really hit us when we rolled back into town after spending a couple of weeks in Waco and then Canton. We’ve been to Waco before—we’re fans of the Magnolia Market and everything Chip and Joanna Gaines are building. We like the industry and work ethic of those two. Waco, on the other hand… it’s not really for us.

Canton was nice. The people we encountered there were good and kind. The fact that everyone was there for one of the biggest flea markets on the planet surely helps. But when the trade days were over and we found ourselves winding down in a local RV park, struggling to get LTE signal so we could work, we decided it was time to move on. So we hoofed it back here.

And that’s when it happened.

It was almost the instant we rolled into familiar territory here. We passed a sign telling us where we were, and then spotted some landmarks we recognized, and that was it. We suddenly, strongly, felt at home.

We’ve felt that before.

On our way back to Texas, after spending a rough patch in Colorado Springs—temperatures below freezing, a bout of bronchitis, an “incident” with the black tank on the van—the instant we crossed the state line I felt my powers returning. Home. That was the feeling.

It happened again when we got to our old stomping grounds, around Sugar Land, Texas. I felt that boost of energy that only the familiar can provide. The feeling of being in a safer, warmer place. The feeling of being in a place where someone cares for and loves you.

Something, though, was changing.

Kara and I have lived around the Sugar Land area for years. It’s only about an hour north of where I grew up, and so everything within seventy miles feels like “home” to me. But before we’d gotten back to Sugar Land, Kara and I had already started looking for a place to live in the Cedar Park area. We landed in a new housing development in Liberty Hill, wedged between Cedar Park, Leander, and Georgetown. And we’d spent a few weeks driving around, exploring, staying in the occasional RV resort or extended stay hotel. We started to become familiar with our surroundings, and from there things started to feel like home. In fact, it started feeling more “home” than where I was raised.

And to me, that’s weird.

Humans are weird in general, really. Because our sense of “home” does shift and change depending on the context of our lives. We are adaptive and adaptable, when it comes to our living situation. We can transplant ourselves nearly anywhere and, with some nesting and acclimation, that place becomes home.

With one caveat.

One of the reasons Sugar Land has been “home” for us for so long is the fact that Kara’s family lives there, and my own family lives only about 45 minutes from there. The people we love were always in that area, and that was what made it home.

But a strange phenomenon is happening as the two of us consider new digs. Something I couldn’t quite have predicted.

First, Kara’s folks announced to us, while we were living full-time on the road, that they were “pulling a Kevin and Kara.” They’d taken a road trip to the Texas Hill Country, and had found a place they liked. So they’re building a house, selling their Sugar Land Home, and transplanting.

The reasons that’s a “Kevin and Kara” is because the two of us have always been pretty spontaneous about our living arrangements. We’ve lived in six rental properties, two “borrowed’ homes, one house we’ve purchased, and three RVs since we got married in 2006. And every one of those homes was something we decided, on a whim, to try out. We wouldn’t trade any of them for anything.

And we had, at one point, told Kara’s folks that we’d come to love the Texas Hill Country. We loved it so much, we thought we might come back around and find a place to live there. And, being us, it was a pretty fair bet that we’d do exactly that.

It must have inspired the two fo them, because they rolled right up to the hill country to find a place for themselves. And they told us all about it over one of our weekly video chats.

Once we learned that her folks were moving to the area, it shifted things a little. We were both getting tired of Sugar Land—and particularly of little things like hurricanes and flooding, threatening us for a few months out of every year. So knowing that we’d have family in the Hill Country now made it easier to just decide. We were going to find a place, and we were going to make the area home.

And then a surprise…

When my mother and brother heard we were moving to the area, they decided it would be a good move for them as well. My mother is getting close to retirement, and my brother has been looking for a change. This seemed like a good time time take a leap, to start fresh.

So, they’re looking for they’re looking to move here as well.

Suddenly, the largest chunk of my family was now going to live in a completely different part of the state. And once that happened… well… home shifted position.

This is still a weird thing, and I still haven’t pieced out what any of it means. But in my mind things have shifted the way you might movie a pin in one of those map apps. The little red divot used to point to Sugar Land and its surrounds, and now it’s pointing to Cedar Park. And the old area is now just “a place I’m familiar with.”

Home, though, is here.

Here… not just in a place that’s familiar, but with people I love. Here, where I can swing by to help my mom with something in her place. Here, where I can go play golf with my father-in-law. Here, where my brother can swing by to check in on our house while we’re off on a road trip.

These are the things you do when you are home. These are the elements that make a home. The location has changed, but it’s still home.

It’s weird because my family is coming with us to a new world, a new experience. For the past 15 years, Kara and I have always been kind of out on our own when it came to our adventures. But this time, everyone else is coming along, too.

Reflecting on this, thinking about what it means to be home, to feel at home, to think of a place as home, is changing a lot about my perspective. It’s making me rethink a lot of the assumptions of my life. I was already comfortable with the “home is where you park it” concept of RV living, but now I’m realizing that it can go deeper than that.

Because one day, all those people who are my home may be gone. People pass, leaving you behind. It’s happened to me a lot. There’s a sense of loss that comes with it. And that loss, I now realize, is that part of my home fading. The threads of connection between me and that person, in that place, in that time—they thin out. They don’t snap. They’re always there. But they become more memory than reality.

When those people who are home are gone, I’ll still, somehow, feel at home wherever I am. I’ll still feel a connection to the people and the place. I’ll form new threads of connection. I’ll become more familiar. I’ll become more at home.

And I’ll be home for someone else.

Weird, right?

Photo courtesy of my amazing wife and resident sleepy-head photographer, Kara Tumlinson

Greetings from chilly Leander, Texas!

This morning we’re parked in an RV park in Leander, having rolled in from Sugar Land yesterday evening. We’d gotten a much later start than I had wanted—a lot of prep, packing, and organization got left to the last minute. But I think that worked out to our favor—it meant a few last hours with the in-laws, a very hearty breakfast, and a chance to catch a nap and do some reading before we got on the road.

A good day, in other words.

There was, of course, the obligatory stop at Buc-ee’s—the Texas landmark super-sized convince store chain that started it’s life in the same town where I started mine, Brazoria, Texas, ten years after I started roaming the Earth and asking where I could get some Beaver Nuggets. Ask and ye shall receive, Young Kevin.

Buc-ee’s has been a long-standing part of my mental and cultural landscape. I knew it first as a tiny, dingy convenience store in downtown Brazoria that in my teen years got an upgraded, fine-looking sister store several blocks away, and miles closer to my house. Just in time for me to get a driver’s license and a teenage lust for sodas and junk food, Buc-ee’s started its meteoric rise to Lone Stardom, establishing itself and its colorful red and yellow beaver logo as true Texas staple. With billboards punning and winning throughout the state, if you’re driving through you’re going to see it. And you are going to be intrigued.

And when you see the mega stations, with hundreds of pumps and crowds that would be envied by Disney World, you’re going to stop. Because nobody can pass that kind of spectacle.

Try the Beaver Nuggets, trust me.

Speaking of billboards, one of my favorite roadside ads in the entire world is a Buc-ee’s billboard, and the only one i’ve seen outside of Texas. It’s in Florida, of all places, and reads “Cleanest Restrooms Anywhere! 797 Miles. You can hold it!”

You gotta respect that kind of advertising acumen.

As much as I respect and love the Beaver (sounds dirtier than I intended), Buc-ee’s is just a way station, not the destination. Once Kara and I had our required road trip fare, it was back to the highways and byways, rumbling along in the Novel-T—our pet name for the 2020 Coachmen Beyond travel van we lived in for four months as we roamed from Texas, through lesser states (sorry Indiana), and into Michigan. We hadn’t intended to go there, hadn’t even heard of Holland, Michigan, before essentially throwing a dart at a map and deciding, “Yeah, that sounds good.” But that was maybe the best place we could have ended up, accidentally or otherwise. It was a healing kind of place, and a good start to an adventure that Kara and I had dreamt about for years.

We made our way through the rest of the country from there, not quite seeing it all but seeing enough to sate our travel lust for at least a short while. We had some bumps (literal and figurative), we had ups and downs, good times and bad, sickness and health. It was a good trip. Four months of travel, just the two of us and Mini, the tiny dog with the biggest heart of any living thing I know.

In November we had planned to go to Utah for Thanksgiving, but between snow and the pandemic and getting sick and a very unpleasant incident with the black tank that I’ll tell you over some stiff drinks, we decided it would be better to go “home.”

So that’s a loaded word, and it’s one I’ve come to appreciate in a new way lately. Home, as they say, is where the heart is. And since our hearts go with us, OR WE DIE, then home can be anywhere we are. Anywhere that we find the love, support, and joy of family and loved ones.

So when we decided we wanted to go “home,” it told me a story, though I wouldn’t understand it until later. This morning, in fact.

We needed to see family and friends. We needed to see comfortable and familiar surroundings. We needed to take a minute and regroup.

So we stayed with Kara’s folks from Thanksgiving through the New Year, a couple of months worth of chatting and having dinner together, having breakfast on Sundays, bickering sometimes about politics and pandemics, and sharing memories and stories. We saw friends, and took small road trips. And I personally read, and read, and read, and wrote some, too. And healed and rested, because I needed that.

But the itch started about a month ago, and yesterday I scratched like a bear rubbing the bark off of a pine. We got back into the van, back on the road, and headed for home.

The next home.

Something I forgot to mention earlier—on our way back to Sugar Land, we stopped near Austin, and started looking around for where we just might want to set down roots. We landed on a place, near Leander. And it’s currently being built. We’re beyond the moon excited, believe me!

It’s going to be months before the house is finished, and there are all sorts of challenges to deal with. Patience is the biggest. And honestly, the way the world is at the moment, there’s really no way to know for sure if things will or won’t fall to pieces. They could. The whole house deal could fall apart.

That’s the risk we’re all taking right now. The world is insane, and trying to steal our magic back. But to quote Red from Shawshank Redemption, “You either get busy livin’, or get busy dyin’.'“

The risk that things could fall apart can’t be an excuse to never try for what you want. Challenges and impossible-seeming odds make victory that much sweeter. Like a bag full of Beaver Nuggets.

Trust me, try them.

So for now, Kara and I are back in the van. We’re doing a little “Texas Tour.” We’re first putting ourselves in the place we’ll be living, trying the fit, getting comfortable with it. That’s something we’ve done since we’ve been married—put yourself in the space. Live as if. It’s led to some pretty amazing experiences for the two of us. We’ve gained a lot more than we’ve lost.

This chilled morning in Leander, with my back propped against a cushion, a cup of coffee at hand, and the sun rising outside the van’s window—with Mini rooting under the blanket covering my legs, and Kara apparently building a 747 out of odds and ends so she can go take a shower (seriously, she is one of the most elaborate preparation people I know), well… with all that, what else could I say but, “I’m home.”

Home again.

So what does home mean to you? Tell me in the comments. If you’ve read this far, you’ve earned some screen time of your own.