No Place Like ...

It's true what they say, you know. About home. About how you never really appreciate it until you're gone. I can attest to it because I'm living it. Right now.

I'm 8,500 miles away from where I grew up, the house I moved out of when I was 17. And it sure feels like it sometimes. Right about now is where that whole appreciation part comes in.

I'm thankful that I remember how the breeze felt when my mom used to open the front door and the back door at the same time. I'm thankful I remember how the red clay outside would track in every time someone came in. And I remember how the pear tree in the front yard was just a shrub when we moved there 11 years ago. Now it's tallest branch is in line with the rooftop.

I appreciate how my old bedroom door needs a good shove to get it to shut all the way. And how the hot water in the shower takes a little longer to get hot than it should. I appreciate the smell. The bay windows in the breakfast room with a view out to our woods. And the deer that sometimes come right up by the back porch to eat whatever they can find in my stepfather's manicured lawn.

Yeah, that's home. My home. Wherever I go, that will not change. Kind of sad, really ... knowing that no matter how happy I am or how much I love my boyfriend, a part of me will always be in Georgia.

It will be in my mom's front yard, where I used to play while my grandpa was building our house so long ago. It will be on my grandparents' old gazebo, where we used to churn old school vanilla ice cream with my grandfather. And in my Oma's pool down the road, where my brother and I and all of our cousins would swim around and around and around, trying to make a whirlpool with just the weight of our tiny bodies.

It will be in our old court, where we'd race to the bottom on our banana seat bikes after a game of kickball. And it will be on the softball field in Harris County, where I shed as many tears as I did drops of sweat, and where I learned that sometimes loss is just as important to the soul as victory.

That is where my home is. Sometimes I wish it wasn't so far away.