Home Again, Home Again

I love moving. Not the brown-box, packing-tape-wrought kind of moving. The fresh-breath-of-air, unencumbering kind of release to leave an old place and root about in a new one.

This latest move is big. Ann Arbor (six years’ duration) to Seattle (slated for at least the next five forseeable years). It’s nice to have a plan. Nice, even to face down the butterflies of change rumbling about on leaden wings and Caterpillar-grade tread within my stomach.

Leaving. Is hard. I’m arm-wrestling a fair bit of trepidation. And wondering what really constitutes home. Can it be packaged, to be reconstituded with a bit of fresh air and water in a new place?

I wouldn’t have thought so. I find myself deeply attached to certain places. Increasingly, I won’t take a rental without an immediate jolt of “Yes. Home.” And each time it’s brown-box season these days (I’ve juggled three moves to various sublets in the past three months), I find myself cow-eyed and sloppy, bemoaning how leaving the room I’ve been so happy in is going to completely unsettle me, and I’m never going to find another place like it again, yadda yadda and so forth.

Surprise, I’m wrong – I’m finding home wherever I turn, and it’s not just because I strew my belongings over each new shelf in an attempt to normalize the new space.

Turns out, home comes down to four walls and a few windows admitting the right kind of light. That’s it. Quality of light. For all the Kinkade fans out there, that’s no news. And it shouldn’t be for me.

But even though I am surprised by this, I’m comforted. Home no longer seems that elusive. I’ve only to look for something second or third story, something with old, thick walls (preferably), and with two, (preferably) three wide windows. Trees outside are optimal, for that treehouse feel. I thought I needed high ceilings, but don’t think so. I thought I needed hardwood floors, but maybe not.

I know I need only pure, high-grade eastern light, like tapping the maple tree of each new morning afresh.

And that makes me feel as though (short of catastrophic pollution), I’m about to find home over and over again (and yes, I know how overcast Seattle can be. I’ll cope.) To me these days, that’s good news. Move on.