My Home

"...it just sort of happens one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist...I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place." Garden State
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Maybe it was the finality of it all, our last Christmas in our house, the house I grew up in; maybe it was that my brother and his wife are going to have a baby and I'm going to be an aunt. maybe it was the fact that my dad allowed/asked someone else to do the dishes and as I stood there at the sink washing away lasagna noodles and salad dressing, I realized that you really do miss out on a lot of the action when you're the dad; maybe it was the comments my mother made about her mother. or her grandmother; or my dad laughing so hard he cried, which reminded us all of his mother. our beloved grandmother, who we all miss most at Christmastime; maybe it was because it was the first time in four years we were all together on Christmas, where one of us wasn't overseas fighting a "war" that shouldn't be, or in California with his in-laws, because last I checked we aren't old enough to have in-laws are we; maybe it was because for the first time ever in my life I left my house on Christmas day like my brothers used to do when I was little; maybe it was when I left my parents for bed and a quiet house; maybe it was because I have to work the day after the day after Christmas or because I spent the day after at Target and the mall with my sister-in-law shopping for maternity clothes, and clothes for my best friend's daughter who turns two in just a few days; maybe it was the air, still and crisp and clear revealing a universe of stars that the smutty NYC air masks; maybe it was the rain that came later, beating down on my skylights like pebbles; maybe it was a freshly cracked book that I already can't put down; or the solitude in my apartment when I arrived home; maybe it was the candle I lit to warm the air with hints of vanilla. or the hot shower I took where I wasn't afraid to sing really loud; or maybe it was when I folded my laundry and sat mystified by my hospital bills; maybe when I called home to say "I got home safely, talk to you soon" or when my brother pulled away and I pictured him and his wife watching me fumble to find my keys to get into my walk-up; maybe when I checked the mail and it fell out onto the floor in an awkward obtuse pile; maybe when I received my "own" Christmas cards from my cousins, brothers and friends; maybe when my parents said thank you for coming out and for such a special Christmas; maybe it was then that I realized I had somehow become a grown up. that this city is my home and my house is just a place I go to visit, and soon that house will just be a memory, part of the distant past.

maybe that was the moment I needed; the moment I had been waiting for; the moment I knew I could move forward with my very own life in partial clarity.