Coming Home

Ah, coming home. It’s one of my favorite things in the world. There is so much I love about home: my own bed, coffee, couches and a plethora of other things. I love home.

Troy and I re-enter home in very different ways. He usually is the one to unload the car, although I have tried to be better lately about helping with that. But while I like to have some time to just soak up home again, he re-enters best by unpacking everything and setting things right again. So yeah, it’s the coming home version of puttering.

Our kids are funny too, because they get really excited to go someplace, but they get equally excited to come home again. Nic usually disappears into his room for hours of intense play. We got home yesterday and he has already created several masterpieces with his Meccano.

And then we have the dog. She was at the kennel this past weekend, which she doesn’t like much. She used to be able to go to “doggy camp” where she just ran around the vet’s yard with a pack of other dogs and got into heaps of trouble. Either way, when she comes home, she sacks out on the couch and sleeps for hours. Literally. I brought her home around 12:30 and she didn’t really get off the couch for 5 hours.

There definitely is no place like home.

I knew we had to write something today, and have honestly been thinking about it all day. Nothing gripped me, however, so I guess about one or two in the afternoon I decided I’d just post something I wrote in the past that dealt with the theme of coming home. But then I knew that that would be cheating, since the whole point of this blog is to write something new.

So, I sat down tonight to write something new. I’ve been mostly staring at a pulsing cursor for the past hour. Nothing.

At first, I thought: “I’ll try writing a poem to express how I feel about coming home.” But, I was unable to form a single metaphor. It was like trying to describe heat.

Then, I thought: “Okay, if poetry doesn’t work, I’ll try my hand at a little drama.” Sometimes I find that it is better for me to work out my thoughts on a subject by pretending to be someone else, to resolve some inner conflict through imagined dialogue. By the end of writing a drama, I often recognize myself in someone else. But that approach didn’t work either.

Then, I thought: “I can’t just write something…you know…normal…for this. Describing home calls for a little art, you know. After all, home is a special place. It deserves some kind of special treatment.”

So, here’s what I’ve come to realize: Art used to be my home. Now home is my art.