"Home" to California?

"You're on your way home, then," the security officer at the Minnesota airport said to me as he looked at my California driver's license. I nodded, but my heart was in my throat because that is exactly what I was feeling - that I was a visitor in Minnesota on my way home to somewhere else.
I love traveling - new adventures, cultures, experiences - but for 42 year, Minnesota was always my home base. Fritz and I spent two years in Germany, but even then, I always knew that it was just for a finite amount of time, and then we'd be going back home to Minnesota.

For this first year of living in California, each time we went to Minnesota, then returned to CA, it felt more like we were off on an adventure for a while, and it would be just a matter of time before we touched down in MN again.

But this time the trip back to MN was filled with squeezing in visits to family and friends, spending as much time as I could with my parents, and trying to soak in as much MN nature as possible. The valley where we live in CA is beautiful, but when I sat in my back yard in MN with the lush green trees, chirping birds, and the crisp smell of the lake in the distance, I felt like a weight had been lifted and that I could truly breathe again.

But, as usual, the trip was much too short and before I knew it, I was waving goodbye to the little town in northern Minnesota that had been my hometown for 15 years in order to return "home" to California. I worried that it would be different returning to CA now that I was feeling a bit displaced because of seeming like a visitor in what used to be my home state, but a surprising familiar feeling settled in my limbs as I crested the hill above the valley where Temecula and Murrieta lay nestled among the Southern California wineries, and there was some comfort in being home again.

I still consider Minnesota to be the home state where I'm from, but when I go home now, it's to California (even if it still feels a little strange to say it).