Heading "home"

I’m on my way “home”. After a quarter of the year on a theater contract in the mountains of New Hampshire, I am finally headed back “home” to New York City. Why is “home” in quotations, one might ask. Well, dear friend, that is the topic of this particular bus musing.

A four hour bus ride provides ample time for reflection, and the definition of home is the most pressing thing on my mind currently. I just spent three and a half months in Lincoln, New Hampshire. Oh you’ve never heard of it? Then clearly you: A) haven’t read my previous blog yet, and B) aren’t an avid New England skier or semi-wealthy mountain vacation home owner. Towards the end of my stay in the White Mountains, I started to feel a strange attachment to the town, the adventures, and the people of Lincoln. I even told some that it was beginning to feel like home. Thinking over it now, I realize that my entire life will be comprised of many “homes.” I have chosen a life of temporary residences, transient relationships, and very little stability. This is the life of a working actor- the modern day gypsy.

Even before I moved to New York, I considered many places to be “home.” My elementary school days were based in Northern Georgia, a place that will always have a special place in my heart, and a sense of home when I visit familiar places and see the people who impacted my young life. Montevallo, Alabama is another treasured home of mine. A piece of my heart – along with a lot of my blood, sweat, and tears- is buried under those brick streets. Biloxi, Mississippi is (and I assume will always be) the home to which my origin is accredited.  For the past three months, when people ask where I’m from, my typical response is “Mississippi, but I live in New York now.” Does that mean Mississippi is still more of a home to me than New York or the others?

The old cliché claims that “home is where the heart is.” I’m assuming that gives me permission to claim many homes because I have a pretty big heart. Thank you, cliché. That makes things easier.

Yesterday, telling everyone goodbye and reminiscing on our wonderful season, I felt as though I had spent a lifetime in Lincoln, and New York was a distant memory. Today, as I was sitting in the bus station in Boston, I felt the opposite. I had the strange sensation that I had been in New York merely a week prior and that the adventures I had this summer were long past. Time is certainly a funny thing.

So maybe today I add the Papermill Theater to my list of “homes.” I will certainly miss it, and I will definitely be back to visit. And maybe my next home is being prepared for me right now, as I travel back to my home base, NYC. Or, perhaps, the list of places I consider to be “home” is more concrete, and Lincoln, with the passing of time, will take its place as the first on the list in a different category- an equally important, but very different category- more permanent than a vacation, more transient than a home, more important than a temporary residence. Is there a name for that? I know I’m not the first to experience this, but for whatever reason, this is not something they cover in school.

Whatever the outcome of the musings, I am giddy to be going back to New York City today. Singing Sinatra’s “New York, New York” to finish out the season was exhilarating. I am one of the fortunate ones who gets to experience what he and so many artists before and after realized: New York is extreme. It is the highest of highs at times, and on other days it is the lowest of the lows. It’s true that if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere but I want nothing more than to really be a part of it. It is “home,” and I’m going back!

So, start spreadin’ the news!

Grace be with you,

Lindsey Shea