People worry about getting lost.

I don’t.

My GPS occasionally decides that I am somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

My phone sometimes loses its mind entirely.

The car has been known to suggest routes that appear to have been designed by a committee of drunken cartographers.

None of this concerns me.

I have a system.

All I need is a deck of cards.

If I am ever stranded in the Yukon, lost in the jungles of Africa, or wandering through some foreign city whose street signs appear to have been written by a keyboard dropped down a staircase, I simply sit down and begin a game of solitaire.

Within five minutes a voice will appear.

Not from the heavens.

Not from the GPS.

From Kate.

The red five goes on the black six.

There she is.

I ask the important question.

Where am I?

She looks at me as if the answer should be obvious.

You’re in Coronation, Alberta, keeping track of your high school friends.

And just like that, I’m not lost anymore.

The older I get, the more I realize that being lost has very little to do with geography.

When we’re young, we think being lost means not knowing where we are.

Later we discover it means not knowing who we are.

Or where we belong.

Or who remembers us.

I’ve been fortunate.

I know exactly where I came from.

A small town in rural Alberta.

A place where everybody knew everybody else’s business and usually improved the story before passing it along.

A place where friendships lasted longer than most government programs.

A place that still lives in my head, even though I left many years ago.

The funny thing is that no matter where I travel, part of me never leaves.

Not Los Angeles.

Not London.

Not New York.

Not anywhere.

There is always a fellow wandering around inside me who is still keeping track of the people he went to school with.

I suspect most of us carry a permanent address that has nothing to do with real estate.

For some people it’s a farm.

For others it’s a neighborhood.

Sometimes it’s a kitchen.

Sometimes it’s a person.

In my case it’s probably all of those things.

A prairie town.

A comfortable kitchen.

A good cup of coffee.

And a woman who knows exactly where I belong.

The world seems increasingly determined to convince us that everything is falling apart.

The news is full of panic.

The markets go up and down.

Politicians make promises.

Billionaires buy things that don’t need buying.

Experts predict doom with remarkable enthusiasm.

Yet somehow life continues.

The coffee tastes good.

Friends call.

The sun comes up.

And the red five still goes on the black six.

I suppose that’s why I rarely feel lost.

Not because I know where I am.

Because I know where home is.

And whenever I forget, Kate reminds me.