We have been home for two weeks now and I’ve come to the conclusion that I spent the first week in hiding. I’ve spent three years being mostly untouchable and unreachable to family and friends stateside and now that I’m home the thought of anyone and everyone being able to get a hold of me during regular daylight hours makes me claustrophobic. I’m having a bit of a readjustment and that’s okay.
I cried the morning I left Germany. I sobbed my way to the airport and the kids and I sang out goodbyes to every landmark we passed. I didn’t know how we were going to handle this transition.
But the instant we hit the ground in Seattle Germany was history.
Friends, we are home and America is incredible. It’s been two weeks and the only thing I’ve missed about Germany is Jason. He flew in last night and my family is finally together again. I drive down the road and cry while I listen to country music, I hug my Daddy every single day and laugh when my kids come in from the creek covered in mud because they’ve been trying to float a log.
We’re spending most of our summer limbo time in Elma, WA where my family lives. They’re spread around the area on a collection of hobby farms. My parents live in a farmhouse on 100 acres with cows that like to chase small children. This time home we opted to stay out at my sister Kerry’s apartment. It’s been…dream like. We have cousins all over town, up the hill and down the road and out the back and just about any direction you can point a mopey child.
Harrison has suddenly developed a love for football courtesy of his 6 boy cousins who dragged him outside our first day here and made him learn to catch and throw. I watched my girls playing up at Aunt Sara’s with five of their little girl cousins on Saturday and could hardly stand how happy little girls in swim suits running through the sprinkler made me feel. Or maybe it’s the hours of long conversation I’ve logged with my sisters and my suddenly older nieces, Megan and Diana and Allison who went and grew up while I was gone. We have all these generations of girls and I have missed this so much.
I’m ready to be home. I want to be in Elma and I never want to leave. When I think of all the years that I swore I’d never come back because a small town could never make me happy…what a dummy I was. It’s not places it’s people, specifically MY people. We drive out to our farm every few days and walk around the field planning our house and our barn and our horse pasture and where we’ll put the well and the sewer.
I spent so many years suffering from extreme wanderlust. It was a painful thing, a weight in my chest, a dog that chased me everywhere I went. Germany was the first place we’ve ever lived that I felt comfortable and happy and I was so afraid that when we left I’d lose that peace.
But here, waking up with my sister Kerry letting the dog out and listening to my girls follow her to go feed the cows and chickens, watching Harrison and Uncle Mathew during lawn mowing lessons, sitting in my mom’s kitchen and remembering that I can go hug my Dad whenever I want…
This is life. This is the life I want. This is where I want to be.
I am home and it’s amazing.