Oh, the places we'll go; the places we've been

Hotel rooms: at this point in my life I think I could be some kind of expert on hotel rooms, though not really sure what kind of expert that would be.

This is an old one, but not a good kind of old. It's the kind of old that was new and nice when John Grisham was famous, and the kind of place one of his characters could have stayed when they were staying somewhere better-than-cheap but not quite expensive.

The hallway smells ever so slightly of some nondescript Indian dish and a little of retirement home. The room's AC smells like dust and faintly of mildew. The elevators show the kind of wear that comes when drunk people try to catch themselves on decorative moldings, and the hall carpets show what happens shortly after.

In the room, the view is of a parking lot and some kind of office complex that looks like it might have mattered once. There's a mirror just over the desk, and your reflection stares back at you in a way that makes me think some sick decorator might have thought they'd give a suicidal businessman the final incentive.

This is the kind of hotel room where dreams come to stagnate.

But I could talk about all kinds of rooms and arrangements. I've seen places that make you feel you've dropped back in time half a century – straight-up motor lodges where the TV has push-buttons for the six channels it doesn't get – and B&Bs that desperately try to make you feel you've traveled back to the 1800s while you watch HBO in HD on widescreen from your hot tub.

I remember a clean little room at a Motel 6 with beds as hard as boards and a place in Baltimore I shared with Army buddies that I wouldn't have touched the bed if I hadn't been so drunk.

I remember a lonely campsite tired and gritty and wishing I was anywhere or anyone else, and I remember the strangely comfortable situation of sleeping in my family's van, surrounded by everyone I loved who wasn't a grandparent, at some random stop when my Dad was too tired to drive further and we hadn't yet reached our campsite we had budgeted for.

Hell, I've stayed at The Drake. And I've slept more than a few nights in some lonely rest stop with my only company being truckers and a foot of falling snow.

Sometimes, I think I like hotels and campgrounds and motels and things between better than homes. I like the moving; I like the wandering. I like not being "from here" and the sense that, whatever I see, I'm just some kind of spectator.

I suppose it's a kind of armor, like people putting off writing that novel or applying for that job, because as long as you haven't tried, you can pretend you haven't failed. It's so much easier, so much simpler, to imagine we don't have the particular kind of success we desire most because we didn't try for it, rather than to try for it, and find it was never ours to have.

And what a waste – we all know and there's no real debate – a life of in-betweens and almosts. And now comes all the old adages about loves lost versus never loved, or "seize the day" and various inspirational quotes. But then after comes the on-ramp, and the open road, and still even in this there's so often some impermanent permanence, some auspice of a home, such as the fuzzy cat purring in my lap or the dog sighing himself to sleep in the back seat.

Still, out on the road, I've always missed "it," even when I wasn't sure what "it" was. Sometimes it was nameless; sometimes it was as specific as a night and time and face. And the older I got, the stronger that sense of missing became; and the stronger it became, the older I felt.

Because we all start somewhere, some home.

Mine was like a fairytale, even without comparing it to the various kinds of hell I've heard tales about from others, or the hells I've watched adults my own age needlessly create for their children.

In mine, there were traditions all our own, and even words all our own, such as "coucha," a creation of my oldest brother.

And there were shelves of books in nearly every room, and sneaking down to grab one in the middle of the night from the room next to the kitchen, so proud of myself I had snuck past my parents, and so unsure as I reflect now whether they really didn't hear me, or simply were less than worried that I was sneaking a book that would put me to sleep anyway.

There was that time I had worked out a whole play in my head, something about a little boy who ran away from home – it's possible I was trying to make some kind of point; I was a dramatic child – and my parents and my siblings – all five older siblings – patiently followed me around the stations of my little performance and took one the roles I assigned them, and not so much as rolled their eyes at my silly little exposition (at least that I saw).

There was my Grandma Duh (her husband came from German roots, and her last name is pronounced like "dew"), and the taking for granted that, for us, visiting Grandma meant just walking upstairs and knocking on her door. All the "shopping trips" I took on my tricycle while she waited in her chair on the porch, and all the meals we ate of imaginary fast food I brought back as a treat.

And there was so much more: the huge window seat given over to whole towns and civilizations made of Legos; that gigantic old tractor tire half-buried in the ground that made our sandbox better than any other I have ever seen; a dog named Humphrey Bogart, with eyes to earn the name; the little flagstone path winding between the house and a line of tree-like bushes; my Mother at her desk typing so fast she'd outrun the typewriter, or at her piano, swaying slowly in time as she played; my Father reading some book passage or short article to us as we cleaned up after dinner.

There's a phrase from a show some of you may know called Doctor Who, when he says he's going "home, the long way 'round."

I think, whether one imagined or one remembered – or as all things preserved in imperfect human memory really are, perhaps somewhere more in-between the two – all the ramblings and journeys and half-starts and incompletes and trial runs we make are all, eventually, nothing more than trying to make it back to that homelike promised land some part of our hearts has promised to us.

I think some lucky few, they find it in their 20s, or they keep it and they bring some others to that safe harbor who were not so lucky in their starting place.

And then there's us, the ones who take the long way home.

And one last memory, if you'll indulge me, of my Grandma's voice, heard over the phone, the last time I would hear it.

I was in college and had crashed my bike, a new one this time, and was limping it home in the dark after work, when I realized there in the lamp light that I hadn't called my Grandma Duh in a while. I opened my flip phone and called her, maneuvering my damaged bike with one hand and holding the phone to my ear with the other, and when she asked what I was up to, I told her about my latest adventure in my ongoing bad luck with curbs.

"Oh, Ben," she said, with laughter and comfort and that tone of voice we have for the faults we adore in those we love.

And some years later – going on decades now – I still swear – or at least like to hope – that I can hear every nuance and lilt of those two words in my memory as clear as when they were spoken.

And now there's these little humans who seem to look up to me, in ways that frighten and astound me, and I find myself eating pretend meals and indulging imaginary narratives of adventure and discovery, and I find myself calling up grandparents and siblings and parents and even Sunday school teachers. I find myself setting aside work, the way my Grandma Duh would set aside her sewing, and stepping away from what feels important for what she still reminds me is actually important. I find myself less concerned with finding home, than with making sure someone else has one, and a loving one, to guard them with memories and reminders of their own when they are far from it.

Now, I try to give them the lumber and nails and all the other metaphors that I was given. And now I know it was never about finding my home, because my home has traveled with me all these years, but about finding those with whom I could share the gifts I was given.

And they may never know it, or probably even guess, but every time they stop and show someone the attention I showed them, it's not just me they'll be remembering, but Grandma Duh, and my parents, and my siblings, and untold generations I never even met who gave those gifts before.