Where?

I have been thinking a lot recently about place. Specifically, if I have one. If so, where is it? If not, how do I find one? Is it something I even need to have? In Cleveland, there is an empty house that was once "home" with all the messy, sentimental glory the term suggests. That glory faded not quite 4 years ago. In Cleveland there is also a house that has become a home again, but not "home." It isn't mine, and I've lived away from it too long to claim it as my own. In Oberlin, I had "home" but had to leave to have "life." Pity when those two can't coexist. In Boston, I have had apartments, dwellings. Boston was never home. Now I am leaving here for somewhere new. What I did not realize when I left for college, or when I left for grad school, is that moving to new places is made significantly easier by knowing that what you're leaving behind is solid. You know, viscerally, that when they say "you can't go back home" they're absolutely right. But you can still visit, and that's as it should be. We grow up, we move away, we come home to visit, and return to our lives. But what happens when "home" is a moving target? My father is being interviewed for a position at Dartmouth. I hope he gets it for a lot of reasons. But the prospect of not having a place to stay in Cleveland is unexpectedly disturbing. Can a city feel like home when you have to sleep on a friend's couch when you go there?