Coming Home

Almost two years ago, I sat in circle and focused on what I most wanted to come into my life. I wanted a feeling of Home, a settled, calm surety to my life that had eluded me in my early twenties when everything was focused on new beginnings and the incredible energy that supports genesis at all levels. My first years out of college were a series of compromises, all aimed at getting somewhere else--somewhere closer to where I wanted to be--and at 26 I was dismayed that I hadn't gotten any closer yet. It was time to make some big changes.

Hah. Little did I know what was coming.

Shortly thereafter I took a new job, one that has repeatedly whisked me off to the East Coast. I have seen Fall in North Carolina and Winter in Boston. I have started a day at 11° F and ended it around 65° F. (It's gone the other way, too.) I've been gone for such long stretches of time that I have forgotten where my car was parked, and spent so many weeks in other states that I've mis-remembered our freeway names. This seemed to me a very odd way to find "Home", by going as far away from it as possible, repeatedly, until the word began to take on a diffuse and uncertain meaning.

When I was in North Carolina, there were friends to see and places to visit and routines that began to feel familiar. It was turning into "my backyard", as my manager had joked shortly after I was hired. I thought he was crazy, then I spent half my working days in Raleigh each month for four months straight and it suddenly made sense. Friends from my past were there, too. I saw Lau' in RTP, and Wes & Tanya in Cambridge. The one time work took me to a familiar place, the Bay Area, I was able to drive down to Santa Cruz and see friends for dinner and ice cream at Mary Anne's. My future family wasn't too far away, either. I drove to Providence to see Elaine while I stayed over the weekend in Boston, and my niece was born in Virginia when I was staying in RTP. (A snowstorm kept me from visiting that weekend.)

Somewhere in the last two years, I stopped thinking about Home being tied to my hometown and my family and all the familiar things about this city. But there was always something special about flying back into San Diego, looking down on Balboa Park, and knowing that I had a quarter-century of memories here, too.

About a year ago, M and I found each other through a similarly strange network of diffuse connections. He was friends with the friends in Santa Cruz, though we missed being part of the same group by a couple years. When John & Liz moved down this way, one of the friends-who-help-friends-move invited M to come say hi. Then M became part of the group down here (which is still very tied to the group up there), and before long coming home from the other side of the country meant seeing M, too.

Now he travels, and I'm the one home most of the time. And we have a house, instead of two distant apartments. And the house came about while I was mostly on the other side of the country. It needs work, and we're slowly fixing it up. Our lives seem financially stable and quite fortunate, while the rest of the country is sliding into recession. We're planning a wedding, and I may spend a week or more in Europe this Fall. That calm, steady surety is there, but not in any way I would have imagined. The world is chaotic -- economy calamity, Russia "invading" Georgia, the state has no budget, water prices are rising, etc -- but we're making plans for the next five years, putting money away each month, and treating ourselves to re-watching movies we already own in the quiet expanse of our very own living room.

We dream about buying a parcel of land up in the mountains some day, and having enough space to choose our neighbors and invite our friends to retire near to us. We imagine our living room with built-in bookcases and our yard with more fruit trees and far less lawn. We dream of indulging ourselves with a solid counter top for the kitchen, and new tile that is correctly installed, but at the same time we are growing into loving the space we have. Stupid cabinets and all. We accept that he will go back to school and money will be tighter for awhile, but that it's an important part of shoring up our future financial solvency.

I don't know how it happened, and maybe you can chalk the whole thing up to magic, but the last two years have brought me home. I have a house, a future husband, dear friends and better relationships with my family. There's a white picket fence, but life's far from picture-perfect. And I think, perhaps, that's just the way I like it.

I know I complain about work a lot but when I look at my life as a whole, I'm happy. I'm happier than I thought I'd be when I decided to make some (big) changes. It's a good journey and I'm glad for the company, too.