“There isn’t a cloud in sight,” they say, though sometimes there might be a few wispy white things on the edge of the horizon, hovering above housetops and distant mountains. And while I can’t see those distant mountains from here, I looked around, squinting, and there truly is not a cloud in sight.
I’m home.
I’ve lived here for two months now, but this weekend was the first time I left town, stayed away for a few days, and then returned, groggy, with a bag of dirty clothes and several dozen pictures on my phone.
If the 17 pages in my journal sporting new writing are any indication, this trip was steeped in thoughts and feelings as well as faces and experiences. Someday, I’ll write more about these revelations, but for now I’m simply soaking up home.
When I shuffled through my front door after one flight and three bus rides, there was no ache in my chest for a certain forested neighborhood, a queen-sized bed with a blue-and-white comforter, or those three faces that look the most like mine.
Small-town California hasn’t seen the last of me, make no mistake about that. I’m still squeezing two states into my answer when people ask me where I’m from. But I’m attaching the word home to my little brick duplex and finding that it fits.
I left for the weekend anxious to reconnect with some of “my people” and to set aside the loneliness that brushes up against me. When I returned, though, it was with a greater appreciation for the friends I do have here.
I close my eyes and I dream of familiarity and ease, of knowing people well enough to invite them over “just to hang out,” of companionable silence and tossed-aside masks.
For now, though, I will lean into ultimate Frisbee afternoons and house church evenings, trying not to cringe when my disk goes wildly off course yet again or when the words coming out of my mouth don’t quite sound normal. I will practice hosting and being hosted. And I will hold the laughter and the good conversations close to my heart like the gems they are and see what comes of them.