heart home

“Heart Home” is a very autobiographical song. When I was in law school in Madison, Wisconsin Pamela lived next door to me with group of girls. We knew each other enough to say “hello” but not much more. Twenty-three years later one of Pam’s roommates came through town and called a reunion and invited me. I wasn’t going to to because it was the day after my house was nearly destroyed by the Shorewood floods. I wound up going and was seated next to Pam at dinner – and the rest is, as they say, history.

You can see us tell the story here.

I’ve worn out three goodbyes like old blue jeans
Each one tore a little more at the seams
First was fire, burned fast and bright
Second was silence in the middle of a fight
Third one drifted like a ghost in a room
Left me talking to the echo of doom
I told myself love just wasn’t my road
Just a string of broken signs I’d been shown

But time has a way of circling back
To the places you didn’t know you lacked

And I found my heart home
Where I never looked twice
Just a face from the doorway
In a different life
No old flame, no what-could’ve-been
Just a quiet kind of truth settling in
Who’d have thought after all I’d roamed
You’d be my heart home

We were kids on the edge of who we’d be
Passing hellos like they didn’t mean a thing
You were right there on the other side
Of a paper-thin wall and a different life
No sparks flying, no grand design
Just two worlds running side by side
Funny how something so close, so small
Could mean everything now, after all

Guess the heart knows things we don’t at the time
Leaves a door cracked open in the back of your mind

I was chasing sparks, you were living your days
We were strangers standing inches away
Now the years fall off when you say my name
Like the long way ’round was the only way

Not a memory—something new
All this time, it led to you

Yeah, I found my heart home
Not in yesterday But in who you are
And the choice we made
No rewinding, no in-between
Just a love that showed up quietly
After roads I walked alone
I found my heart home

Not what we were—what we’ve grown
That’s what makes this heart a home