... jiggity jig.
It's been over a week since I've come home, specifically, home to Germany. It feels foreign to say that, not only because I have since bought my own home, or because I've been away for well over two decades, but specifically because nothing looks the same. Not that I expected it to, but if I were tasked to point to a room and say, "that, that still looks like I remember it" I would have to point to the room with the oil tank in it and hope for the best. I could probably count on one hand the number of times I went into that room.
I reocgnize the shapes of things, a lot of the furniture is the same, most pictures are the same, but they are all either rearranged, or reupholstered, or newly wallpapered or ...! And the outsides as well. Houses have been painted, trees removed, buildings raised, streets changed.
I've gone away and though I took with me everything I'd learned, it's only in coming back for almost the entirety of the summer, to do and to help do I realize how much I've made my own way in almost everything. It's almost like relearning how to do things. You hesitate to do something as mundane as loading the dishwasher, because you know for fact that you won't buy anything that's not dishwasher safe, and so you can just cram it all in there. But you've seen your mother's china pattern in antique stores, so you're not quite sure what to do with that. You've long abandoned folding shirts in thirds vertically and then in thirds horizontally, because it's so much easier and faster to just fold it all into quarters. Fold, fold, done! Fold underwear? What?
I've long since embraced the philosophy of "don't sweat the small stuff" and I'll allow that my definition of "small stuff" could use some adjustment in either direction. But my idea of making the bed is sorting the blankets before I get out and then adjusting, maybe. I know B will turn himself into a blanket burrito the moment I'm out the door, so really, why?
And the pictures. Not just the art. The family pictures. There are far too many sets of my own eyes following me around the house. Even in my own room. From the one side my brother stares at me from various milestones in his life. His first graduation from college. His wedding. In the opposite corner is a picture of Pope John Paul II smiling beatifically with his funny hat on his head. This room was once mine, or at least, I had made it mine. The one room that I ever truly considered mine is the one under the roof, where I could write in peace, listen to music and be away from it all. This room, also once mine, was always too small, too impersonal and right next to the bathroom, and every pleasure you can imagine that brings.
It's unsettling, surreal, almost uncanny. It is mine, yet not mine. I now have a house. Of course I miss the people in it, but I miss the house, too. I hug it - really I do, don't laugh - because it's just the perfect house, it feels so much like home. Two years in and we're still not wholly unpacked, but when it's complete! And so I miss it. I'm keenly aware in someone else's kitchen, even my mother's kithen that I once knew so well, of the familiarity that's not there, the comforts of home, the smells, the sights.
I keep opening the cabinet over the stove in an attempt to pull out a glass that is in a cabinet on the opposite side of the kitchen now. I keep finding salt.
I reocgnize the shapes of things, a lot of the furniture is the same, most pictures are the same, but they are all either rearranged, or reupholstered, or newly wallpapered or ...! And the outsides as well. Houses have been painted, trees removed, buildings raised, streets changed.
I've gone away and though I took with me everything I'd learned, it's only in coming back for almost the entirety of the summer, to do and to help do I realize how much I've made my own way in almost everything. It's almost like relearning how to do things. You hesitate to do something as mundane as loading the dishwasher, because you know for fact that you won't buy anything that's not dishwasher safe, and so you can just cram it all in there. But you've seen your mother's china pattern in antique stores, so you're not quite sure what to do with that. You've long abandoned folding shirts in thirds vertically and then in thirds horizontally, because it's so much easier and faster to just fold it all into quarters. Fold, fold, done! Fold underwear? What?
I've long since embraced the philosophy of "don't sweat the small stuff" and I'll allow that my definition of "small stuff" could use some adjustment in either direction. But my idea of making the bed is sorting the blankets before I get out and then adjusting, maybe. I know B will turn himself into a blanket burrito the moment I'm out the door, so really, why?
And the pictures. Not just the art. The family pictures. There are far too many sets of my own eyes following me around the house. Even in my own room. From the one side my brother stares at me from various milestones in his life. His first graduation from college. His wedding. In the opposite corner is a picture of Pope John Paul II smiling beatifically with his funny hat on his head. This room was once mine, or at least, I had made it mine. The one room that I ever truly considered mine is the one under the roof, where I could write in peace, listen to music and be away from it all. This room, also once mine, was always too small, too impersonal and right next to the bathroom, and every pleasure you can imagine that brings.
It's unsettling, surreal, almost uncanny. It is mine, yet not mine. I now have a house. Of course I miss the people in it, but I miss the house, too. I hug it - really I do, don't laugh - because it's just the perfect house, it feels so much like home. Two years in and we're still not wholly unpacked, but when it's complete! And so I miss it. I'm keenly aware in someone else's kitchen, even my mother's kithen that I once knew so well, of the familiarity that's not there, the comforts of home, the smells, the sights.
I keep opening the cabinet over the stove in an attempt to pull out a glass that is in a cabinet on the opposite side of the kitchen now. I keep finding salt.