Home

I think I have written a post with this title before; possibly not. At any rate, I have put writing this blog off for days but the concept of "home" has weighed heavily on my mind since February 17, 2013.

In my last blog about it, I think I said something sage about how the places don't change; we change. Everything is the same but our memory of it is distorted by distance, time and our own inevitable growing up.

Well, that's fancy.

Sometimes places change, too.

Seattle was nothing like I remember, except for the hour Sicily and I spent on the beach at Golden Gardens, or the walk down by Ivar's on the waterfront. Water is a constant for me; not a huge astrology buff, but if I were I would admit that I am every little scrap of everything about my sign. Pisces, if you're keeping track. March 14th, for those who don't know, and yes, I love presents and cards, so feel free.

But I digress.

So I have changed, and the place has changed.

And, like the Pisces I am, I feel all melodramatic about it.

When I was 17, I went on a sort of a moving spree, moving every six months or so for four years. I came to hate moving. Nothing felt right. I was antsy.

Then I started moving from state to state. More expensive and very inconvenient, but it was pretty nice to be able to pack up my whole life in whatever crappy little car I was driving and just leave. My parents had sold my childhood home by the time I was 25 and moved away, so I moved, too, to Colorado and then Seattle. Where I met Dane and had The Child.

And finally.

My home was Dane and Sicily.

I remember vividly one morning when Sicily was a week or two old, looking down the row of lavender pillows on our bed, watching Dane and Sicily sleeping, so full of joy and contentment that I cried (quiet as shit because GOD FORBID you wake a sleeping baby. Just. Don't.). I felt such gratitude for the feeling that I was, in that moment, completely at home and utterly at peace. The sun came in through the slats in the blinds, and I sat up in bed next to my little family and wept for the simple, unadulterated beauty of that feeling.

Home isn't a place. It's just not. It is the people in the place, which is rough because I am generally not too fond of people but when I am I totally am.

But it's not just the people in the place either. It's me in the place. And man, I still kind of suck right now. Which is fine, because that's how things go, and it is getting better but it is still rough being me some days.

So if what I am saying is true, then the planets need to be aligned, I need to be my best self, and I have to be surrounded by just the right people to ever feel like I am at home again.

Yikes. Tall order. I have high hopes for 2014.