Write a short story (600 – 1000 words) that describes your sense of home; write about the values and the stories that you use to connect yourself to, and to identify your sense of home.

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No matter where Ryan went there was always a sense of disruption, discomfort, and an inability to feel completely at ease. For 17 years Ryan had felt this way and, for him, it had become a part of life. While everyone else seemed to enjoy the places they went — his friends were always on social media posting about how much fun they had last weekend or how amazing their friends are — Ryan never felt that sense of connectedness to anything. Sure, he loved his family, his dog, his girlfriend. He had hobbies but he wouldn’t define them the same way as others seemed to define the things they were close to.

To put it simply, there was something missing and he had never been able to find out what it was.

Ryan sat on the grass under a sycamore tree, contemplating this feeling for the thousandth time. The rays of sunlight poked through the branches and leaves and warmed his skin in the cool Spring air. He sighed deeply. He stared at the sky and it stared back. The lack of clouds seemed to both mimic and mock his lack of answers.

“Come on, Ry,” his girlfriend Karen shouted from down the hill atop which he rested. She sat on a 10-speed cruiser, giggling, at the bottom of the hill.

“Can you come here for a sec?” Ryan had spent long enough bouncing these ideas around in his head. It was time to get them out in the open where he could see them.

Karen dropped her bike on its side and jogged up the hill. A little out of breath, she got to the top, smiled, tucked her hair behind her right ear, and sat down beside him.

“Do you ever feel like something’s missing?” Ryan asked.

Immediately, Karen’s eyes shifted to the grass.

Ryan saw the mistake in his phrasing. “Not between us. I love you, you know that. But I mean in life. Like there’s supposed to be this something that everyone feels but it only ever feels like everyone but you feels it.”

Karen recovered from the initial shock of the question and, as she realized Ryan wasn’t breaking up with her, she warmed up to it.

“I think I know what you mean,” she nodded. She blew a piece of floating cotton away from her face then realized the cotton was a good analogy. “It’s like trying to catch a piece of cotton. You can see it but it never quite looks perfectly crisp. And then when you reach out your hand to try to grab it you only ever push it farther away.”

“It’s like every time I try to understand what it is — what’s missing — I just find myself more and more unsure,” he said.

“Okay, well my dad always says that in order to solve a problem you first need to know what it is you’re solving.”

Ryan thought about this and decided it was true. “Okay,” he said. “So how do we do that?”

“First we have to define it,” Karen stated matter-of-factly, adjusting her posture and facing him, ready for the task at hand. “You feel like something is missing, so let’s try to figure out what it is.”

“K,” said Ryan.

“Alright, is it happiness?” Karen started.

“Not really.”

“Love?”

“Nope. Got plenty of that,” he nudged her and laughed.

“Oh I know, money,” she said.

“Well my parents are pretty well off but I guess that doesn’t necessarily make me rich. But I also still don’t think that’s it,” he laughed.

“Okay, speed round. I’m going to say the things that I enjoy in my life and you stop me if any one of them sounds right. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Okay, here goes. Purpose. Hope. Sex. Cars. Monkeys. Adventure. Friends. PS4. Family. Healt—” Ryan cut her off.

“Wait. Family, kind of. That’s close but not really it.”

“Home?” Karen suggested.

“Home,” Ryan nodded his head slowly and looked out at the field below.

He could see his whole town from the hill. The river he grew up on, the forests he ran through, all the places that should feel like home to him.

“But you have a home, Ry. You’ve got a really nice one with a great family,” Karen said.

“Yeah but the thing is, that definition of home just doesn’t seem to fit what I think home should mean.”

“So what should it mean?”

“I was sitting at a bus stop one time next to this old guy — like pretty old, in his 80’s or something — and out of nowhere he just looks at me and says, ‘Would you like to know the answer to all life’s questions?’ I looked around a little to make sure he was talking to me. He was. Seemed like a pretty good offer so I said okay and waited. He seemed to think for a few seconds and then he spoke.

‘Patience,’ he said.

I waited for him to go on but that was it. One word. Patience. We sat there in silence as the bus pulled up. I stood and waited for him to stand too but he just sat there. I asked him if he was getting on the bus, since this was the only bus for this stop. He told me he wasn’t. He told me he was waiting.”

The sun was setting now and Karen nestled in closer as the temperature began to drop.

“It’s a good story but it’s not really an answer,” she said. “Actually, it’s more of a non-answer. You’re saying that in order to find out what home means to you, you have to have patience?”

He laughed. “Maybe.”

The sun took its last look at them as it sunk beneath the mountains. They watched and thought about what it all meant.

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