I never understood homesickness as a kid or young adult because I loved traveling to my grandparents’, to friends’ houses and with my father on various trips to the country. I did not mind being away from home, perhaps because I moved from one geographic place to another frequently throughout my childhood. So home was never one location for me and thus the concept of missing one particular place, foreign.

With today’s digital possibilities, society is not limited to geographic proximity for social connection or participation. In lieu of proximity, we rely on technology to help us construct our collective identities by trying to recreate connections to geophysical locations. Social media sites work as an “unbounded community,” in which my geographic location is only one way to connect me to other social media users.

I’m in Panama City Beach visiting my parents. Today Dad I went exploring around town, looking for the tackier kitschier parts of PCB, which is actually harder than you might think given today’s high rise condos and corporatized environment of the beach today. However, if you go into Panama City proper, otherwise known as “across the bridge,” the pink flamingos and the kitsch is alive and well.

Alabama holds my roots in its dark red clay and kudzu-lined backroads, in the highways between Mobile and Tuscaloosa where I traveled to see my brother in college and in its kitchens where the women in my family told stories as they shelled peas, deveined shrimp and peeled sweet potatoes.