I just returned from a lovely dinner with my kids. I’m glad to have gone–I thought I didn’t have the energy to go, but my daughter wanted us to have “family time,” so we went. I am grateful to her for pushing the matter, though I was quite tired and didn’t much feel like going out, particularly to a sit-down restaurant. I would’ve been content with delivery or carry out of some variety or other. In the end, after her begging, cajoling, sulking and other not-so-subtle methods of manipulation, I agreed to go to a sushi restaurant–again, not high on my list of places I felt like going. “You need to be more adventurous,” my son chimed in, though he wasn’t deeply invested in whether we went out or not. I ultimately capitulated, as I often do for my children. For better or worse, for most of their lives I’ve tended toward doing things I didn’t really want to do but they did: gone to eat at places they wanted to eat, saw movies I didn’t particularly want to see, and in myriad ways twisted and shaped my life around their needs and interests.
As I reflect on it now, tonight’s dinner was a very small price to pay for the pleasure of time in their company knowing that in a few months such times will be rare. As each of them move their lives forward in different directions and likely different geographic locations from me and from one another, the opportunities to have “family time” will be few and far between. Such times are precious and to be savored, and so I did.
One of the things I am looking forward to in the not-too-distant future is settling down somewhere. I want to be able to create a home for my children to come “back” to on those occasions when they have breaks from school, etc. I feel like I’ve been in transition for a long time–not just in the last year, but perhaps for much of the time I’ve been in California. I have not really created a space for them here that replicated the “home” we had in Michigan–a house with a yard to play in, a garden, trees, etc. set on a half acre of property. Although I have found things I appreciate about living in the East Bay section of the greater San Francisco Bay area, I am not much for city dwelling. I really am much more of a country girl. And while I’m not in a particular hurry to leave this area and don’t really have a sense of where I’m going to be, I do know it’ll be a bit more out in the country than my current urban surroundings. As I ponder my “what’s next” I hope I can move in the direction of situating myself more out in nature.
When I think about my own sojourn from “home,” which to me was where my parents were, I always felt like I had some place to come back to. My sisters and I all talk about going “home” for Christmas or other occasions, even though none of us have lived in our hometown in Indiana for decades. And even though my parents are both gone, my brothers still live there and thus, it is still “home” in that sense of place of origin to which I will return at least annually. I am grateful to have experienced a sense of home; there’s an anchoring, grounding feeling to that. And that’s what I want to create for myself, for my children, for my siblings–a place where we can all come to that feels like we belong there. One could suggest that home is where the heart is, and that’s probably true in one regard. Home is about a feeling, and is not necessarily place bound. But for me, place is vitally important in helping create and sustain the feeling of home. I haven’t quite found it yet and neither has it found me, but it’s inevitable. I look forward to making that happen. Until then, I’ll be grateful for the space I now inhabit and call home.
