And Then... I Came Home

 

Somewhere over Texas at dusk.

Home is....Home is...Home is here?  Where I am?  Confusing.  

I flew home on April 16th, the longest day of my life since it clocked in at a full 48 hours as I crossed the international dateline. 

I had the best kind of air travel: dull, routine, no strange hiccups or interactions or even distressed babies.  I watched Conclave before restlessly sleeping, while the kid in front of me (on the way to an international cheerleading competition in Orlando, FL) watched Peter Rabbit 2. I didn't even know there was a Peter Rabbit 1 movie.  The cassocks and robes of office on one screen, the blue velveteen coat and rabbit ears on the other.  I didn't touch my book (to read or write) and I didn't do any knitting.  Best intentions always lose.  It is like when I make a to do list as I fall asleep, and in the morning I don't even know who that person was.  The Houston customs terminal was stuffy but spacious and only half full.  The immigration agent asked where I was coming from, how long I'd been there, and if I had any food with me and then sent me on my way.  He was friendly to both the people ahead of me and the ones behind me in line.

I made it to Chicago.

The dog danced when I came in the door.  The cat has been sitting on my lap every time I have made a lap.  These are things that made me feel loved and missed.  The many hugs from my friends have been deeply comforting, and a long time coming.

It feels like I'm staying at the home of a close friend, I know a lot of things that should be here, but I forget which cabinet door they are behind and I find myself asking silly things like "Is there black pepper?  Why is the washing machine so big?  Where is dogfood?"  I am divorced from routine in a place that I associate so strongly with having a powerful one.  I sometimes carry things from one room to another, like a rodent in a multi-tiered rat mansion unsure where to stash my nuts vs. my toys and shredded bedding.

All that to say this is much harder than I expected.  I have unexpected deficits.  I veer to the left when walking the dog, I feel like I've forgotten how to hold her leash and I get in the way by standing on the wrong side of the sidewalk.  All this from losing my sense of driving on the right is the only normal.  My mental maps have me going places on the left, so when I go there in the real world it is a skewed mirror version of what I imagined and I have to look for bike racks on the "wrong" side of the road.  Good future proof to remind myself that whatever feels normal is probably just arbitrary, or culture, or both.

I pulled many boxes out of the attic, marveling the whole time "who in the world needs this many sweaters?"  Of course everything I take out of those boxes smells of attic, disuse, and cardboard box.  I am lighting to burn off that veneer of unlived in that has settled over all of my belongings and my linens.

I have started too many enormous projects:

Organize and distribute NZ tchotchkes and gifts (this somehow includes framing and hanging all of my art both new and old, nbd)

Repot all the sad, etiolated houseplants (poor things did not get their Chicago winter artificial sun supplement and it shows)

Rearrange bookshelf (why did I start this one??)

Remake bedroom

Clean the garage

Organize basement

And all of them have been abandoned 2/3rds of the way through at best.  

Really, who in the world needs this many sweaters?  I appreciate the simplicity that is living a life that could fit in two suitcases.  I'm sure this is a temporary frustration, that as I inventory my life I will come to enjoy owning a stapler, craft supplies, and those oh so many sweaters but I'm in the grief phase, suffering from textile-overwhelm.

Concrete things I miss already: the full-fat passionfruit yogurt, the eggs with their bright yellow yolks...  and even some examples that not objectionable to a vegan diet.  

Less concrete things I miss: the lack of preciousness about experiencing the outdoors as somewhere that weather happens.  Last night people literally gasped and ran to hide under an overhang when it started to sprinkle rain.  It wasn't even enough to mist my glasses, so I just kept eating dinner.  I remembered a full rainstorm at a Vegan Makete where kids just walked around in the rain eating ice cream cones, and adults wolfed down hot mushroom pierogies unbothered.  I thought of the outdoor restaurants and their baskets full of crochet lap blankets, a sign of fall and winter seasons.  People wouldn't just not go outside, that's where the fresh air lives (and I guess you can vape there).

I miss that children are considered a ubiquitous part of life.  The host at a restaurant last night was incredibly apologetic that there was a child sitting at the shared table, was that okay?  She seemed very prepared for that answer to be "Hell no."  Even if I didn't like children I would be forced to acknowledge that they do have to exist, and their function as a child does me no harm even when they cry or fuss or eat a hamburger from the inside out at this one did, meat patty, then pickle, then bun).

Things I'm excited about: the birds, I just downloaded the Midwest U.S. bird pack for Merlin.  I hear the cardinal singing from the telephone wire in the back alley and I feel like I have never truly listened to it before, so I'm making up for all that lost North American bird-admiration time.

Spring is here, so it is the appropriate season for overwhelm as flowers and buds and people's collar bones surface after the long winter, and after my surprisingly long and short year away.

Indian borage

The hops has doubled in size since I have been back in the USA.  That's something to get excited about.