The definition of home can take on many different meanings. It can be the place for your summer s’mores gathering or it can be the room for your galaxy of glow-in-the-dark stars.

The meaning of home sways left and right depending on the person defining it.

Many parents, like my dad, think of home as the place where they sleep. It is as simple as the walls around you that keep you warm and the roof that keeps you dry.

To my family, home is the gathering space for our repeated jokes and long stories. It is where we share our holiday dinners on a table that is a little too crowded, and we end up reaching over each other just to get the butter.

To my friends, home is where they have been all summer eating their parents’ food and using up all of the toilet paper. Home is the image of comfort while you are away on a journey that scares you just a little bit. It is where you return to after a year away on a strange adventure with strange people.

But it is also with this strange adventure and these strange people that a new meaning of home is created.

Home can now mean walking up four flights of stairs just to share a bagel with your friends. It can mean waiting until quiet hours begin to start talking quickly and laughing loudly. Home became the place where your friends were and where you all shared all of your best memories together.

It is not one building, one room, or one space that takes on the definition of home. It is who fills the space that makes it home.

For my parents, my family or my friends, home is home no matter where you are. It doesn’t matter if you are 500 miles from your childhood home or right back in your old room, home is where you’re surrounded by the people you love.

Home is where you hide the best snacks in the back of the cupboard, and home is where you sneak food out of the community fridge. Home is where you know every creak in the stairs, and home is when you know where the best lemonade is in town.

The best thing about the meaning of home is that it can sway left and right. You can feel at home while at different places, with different people, and with changing times.

[This article was written while being at home surrounded by my friends that I was fortunate enough to meet on my journey away from home.]