When I was home in Minnesota, I had the chance to see a "hard rime" - the water droplets from a warm fog freeze onto the sides of objects as temperatures drop overnight.
I spent two weeks there. I felt like a page turned. Someone flipped forward in the book of adulthood before I'd finished what I'd started.
I call Minnesota "home" for lack of a better explanation. I've lived many places but since Minnesota is where my sister is, that's my home of sorts. Though we are only in our early 40's, I'm starting to think about where we retire - I don't want to be far from her.
Next, I flew to Miami for work. Miami is another home. I have many friends in the city and I have begun to realize how much I miss life there. I was very, very tired and cut the trip short and was sorry to do it. The sunshine was just right. Everything was in bloom. I was happy to see my friends, who I have been working with for many years now.
The trip back to DC took forever. Nearly twelve hours after a series of delays after three long weeks on the road.
At 1:30 a.m., the pilot had a clear approach for the descent into the city. We floated over all my old favorite places. My college, the Mall, Arlington National Cemetary - the quiet, dark, place in the sea of lights. I spent most of my adult life here, it looks like this time it will be for good.
The question is - how to keep all the other "homes" - Edinburgh. New York. Minnesota. Montana. Oregon. Miami - as well?
It's not an easy proposition. Kansas City is where I come from. My only aunt lives there. One of my two sets of cousins. My daughter lived there when she and her husband was in school. The history of my family is there. Buy I spent my childhood in LA. California is home in so many ways. But so are the suburbs of New York. So many, many memories there. And my parents - they've been in Texas now for over three decades. It is utterly home to them. My brother remembers no other place. I lived there for a year and never made peace with it. When we drove down the coast of Wales, my heart recognized it, and I will always feel pulled that way. And Paris? It connects me and my childhood, me and my husband - and the end of our lives with our children at home.
How do you keep them all as home? I think the only way is love. You cannot live in every place. But you can love and remember them all. You can own them all. They all belong to you. And nobody can take that away from you.
Posted by: Kristen | February 19, 2012 at 09:14 PM