In one of my favorite childhood books, Meet the Austins by Madeline L’Engle, the family goes on a trip. Twelve year old Vicky narrates their return home:We passed the school and the church and the store and then we were driving up our road, up our hill, and we saw our house, our own beautiful rambly white house, and Daddy was pulling up to the garage, and we were home.
Home!
Our tongues and muslces were suddenly freed and we piled out of the car and in through the garage and into the house, the kitchen.
It was home and I remembered it with every bit of me, and yet in a funny way it was completely different.
We ran all the way around the house, looking at it from all four points of the compass, and then back into the house again, and Mother had a record on the phonograph, and the phone kept ringing, all the kids wanting to ask us about our vacation...
I think about that scene every time I come home from a getaway. I’m a homebody from way back, and I dearly love the home we’ve made. Being away for a few days makes everything seem so dear. I appreciate things, the familiarity of things, when we're back from a trip.
My daydreams are rarely about travel. I like the idea of visiting Greece and discovering great places to eat in Italy and France. From there my mind makes a quick leap to passports, airports, long long long flights, language barriers, jet lag, and the constant low-level anxiety I know I would have about being in a foreign country where something terrible could happen and I could be thrown in a Turkish prison! Even though I’m not in Turkey!
Is this normal?
My parents are not like this. My mother is one of the goingiest people I know. My dad decides mid-morning on a Saturday that he’ll drive out to Texas to visit his brother, spend a day or a week, whatever.
Even while visiting places I dearly love and having a wonderful time, I’m always happy to be back at home. I enjoy the comforts of my home. My own shower, my own coffee mug.
Then again. I may not appreciate those things the same way if I wasn't away from them from time to time.
6 comments:
It's true, there's no place like home! Welcome back, Keetha.
Just lovely, Keetha---I was too soon for The Austins, but this passage from the book seems somehow more enticing to me at this part of my life, than did tesseracting when I was younger.
I looked up the author for a moment, and found that her life is divided between "maintaining an apartment in New York and a farmhouse of charming confusion which is called "Crosswicks."
Even those have not the allure of your own words.
Home---click three times and say the words.
LOL...ironically, my daughter just left Turkey today! She is heading to Morocco. I think about those prisons, too. But I'm pretty sure she's not smuggling anything. Except for maybe a knockoff designer bag...there is no place like home.
Aw! I'm am a homebody, too. But that's my favorite part of an exotic trip -- being so happy to get back home. Sleep in my own bed and and make my own tea first thing in the morning. I love seeing how things are different. Smell different. Taste different. Even basic things like fruit and bread taste different in a foreign country. It's so comforting to get back to what is familiar.
Kent so totally agrees with you...but I want to be here and there and there and here and here and there...a hundred a thousand lives where travel is as familar as home.
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