Why home feels so good

Maybe you've been part of a similar conversation:

“When are you coming home?”

“Ma, I am home. I live in (fill in the blank, but let's say LA). You mean when am I coming to see you.”

"Well, yeah, I'm your mother, so where I am is home, right?"

Crickets on the other end...

For the past few months my musician son Ben has been on tour and calling a motor coach home. He's pictured here with brother Justin when Lord Huron played Indianapolis (Justin's home when he and his family aren't with me … wink-wink) in June.

Now that the band is nearing Detroit, the concept of the boys in the band coming home has filtered out to our extended family and friends. Everyone wants to be there for the homecoming on August sixteenth at The Aretha (Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre) in Detroit. Even folks who aren't necessarily fans of the music. They're fans of the people who produce it. And there's nothing like being there with them.

Ditto for the band, whose core members all hail from mid-Michigan, which makes Detroit – the only Michigan stop on the tour – home.

It's been five years since savvy DTE Energy had the band play at the opening of Beacon Park, where an overflow crowd celebrated the addition of a new green space to the revitalized city. So the band is long overdue for another outdoor party in Detroit.

And on the family front, there are new second cousins, new partners, new houses, and new jobs to celebrate.

Coming home is important because it's the ultimate experience of belonging, a state of being that brings us closer than anything to the joy of being alive and the comfort of not being alone. It's among the most important things I want my children to know.

We find belonging in a place, where the experience of being there, or even simply the memory of being there, transports us to a realm that includes not just our bodies, but also our hearts and our heads.

We find belonging when we are with the people closest to us, but also with those who recognize and share in the extraordinary experience of being in that special place, at that certain time, together.

And, finally, we find belonging in identifying a common cause, something we love or are striving for, and are lucky enough to find compatriots to join us on the journey.

So that in that place, with those people, and in that moment, we know the great comfort of coming home.

Welcome home, boys.