Our son George is a Seattleite, and his mother and I like that a lot, although neither she nor I, are, strictly speaking, Seattleites, though in our minds, we are, because Seattle is our home.

In this, the Space Age, humans have come to think of planet Earth as our home. On a personal level, to me this means that everything of Earth is mine: culture, religion, weather, history, flora and fauna, the future: all mine. Ours. And if I wind up at the other end of a wormhole, someone might ask, “Of all the infinite universes in the multiverse, which is your home?” “The one that has the Horse Nebula and planet Earth, the planet with Porter Wagoner,” I’ll say.

At the age of 2, George has had two homes: the condo we lived in when he was born, and the house we now have. Seeing that I live there, and all my stuff is there, it’s my home, but I’ve had many homes. So has my wife.

I lived in one house in Lake Hills from the age of 9 to the age of 20. That was my planet Earth in my universe of life. To get home, I drive up a hill to a cul-de-sac, and I can walk up some stairs to the front door, or walk through the gate beside the carport into the backyard and go in through the sliding glass door into the kitchen.

My house now has a driveway on the same side of the front door. The front door is just about in a straight line with the back sliding glass door, which is to the right of the kitchen. I noticed this straightaway when we first checked out our Olympic Hills house, because it aligns with the floor plan of my old Lake Hills home. Those similarities help me feel at home.

But in that house, the front door faced south. In our house, the house is right on the compass: the front faces west, the back faces east, south is to the left of the front door, north is to the right. Perfectly sensible.

George will have those intuitive rock-solid bearings. Someday he will probably live someplace where the setting Sun does not shine through the living room, nor the rising Sun shine through the kitchen windows and his bedroom window. He’ll be disoriented, the same way I’m disoriented when I go to Portland, Oregon, or Vancouver, B.C. and struggle to figure out which way is north, even when the Sun is out.

When adult George smells mint, and woodsmoke, he’ll feel at home. Our property abounds in wild mint, and when he falls off his hobby horse, he lands in mint. In the non-Summer, woodsmoke from neighbors’ chimneys is thick and ever present.

If George moves someplace not surrounded by trees, that absence will remind him that he once lived in a lusher, greener place.

If he lives in a house with multiple floors and staircases, and has kids, he’ll think, “We never had to deal with these kinds of things when I was a kid.”

In all the different rooms, he’ll think, “My house was never this quiet.”

In a studio apartment, he’ll think, “When I was a kid, my room was perfectly dark and perfectly quiet at night.”

Maybe he’ll drive by the house in 50 years, point to the intertwined copper and spearmint beech trees in the front yard, and say, “My dad always talked about how he brought those home as saplings from Volunteer Park, because they were some of his favorite trees in Seattle, and that was his choice to take the place of the fountain that used to be there, but my Mom didn’t like it, so we took it out back to grow strawberries in. Those two Douglas firs my parents got as saplings from the Portland Marathon, and that chestnut tree is from a chestnut tree also in Volunteer Park. All trees my folks planted as seeds and saplings right after we moved here way back in 2013! ”

Home is also a place of primordial fear. A house is a place of isolation. Only a few doors and windows come between a family and the thousands of bloodthirsty Orcs of the outside world.

A child gradually comes to realize that anything can sneak in through an open window, and no one might ever know what became of him. A child learns that even in the family, the older, the stronger, the smarter, victimize the younger, the weaker, the dumber.

In the family home, a child can learn what it means to have a family. But one can also learn what it means to be all alone, with no support from the very people he needs most.

When I die, I’ll instantly be someplace I’ll immediately recognize, I’ve long thought. I’ll realize that this life has ended, and I’ll feel at home where I wind up next. Perhaps it’ll be a place where I’ve lived for ages, among beings I’ll recognize as on-again, off-again eternal friends.

Maybe it’ll be a place where my mom and dad, and my brothers, and my wife and her family, our kids and relatives, will have barbecues in a backyard with trees and flowers, dogs and cats, sunlight and shade. It’s hard to imagine anyplace being more like home than a place like that!