All my life I have searched for a place of belonging, a place that would become home. Growing up in a small Kentucky town, I knew in early childhood what home was, what it felt like. Home was the safe place, the place where one could count on not being hurt. It was the place where wounds were attended to. Home was the place where the me of me mattered. Home was the place I longed for; it was not where I lived. My first remembered family dwelling, a cinder block house with concrete floors on a hill, stood as though naked against the lush backdrop of a dense natural landscape: trees, honeysuckle vines, blackberry bushes, and wild strawberries all made the concrete house seem out of place, set against nature, but unable to take over the world of lush wild things since the house was fixed unchanging and the natural landscape adamantly growing.