"I Feel Home"

Here's the scene:

I've cleaned out our little pantry cupboard.  I've organized the obsessive amount of flavored tea bags I brought back to Italy from Michigan.  I've been (slowly) rotating laundry - since each load takes almost four hours start to finish.  So, I move upstairs to change sheets.  Kaia is happily playing in the girls' room as I grab clean sheets for their beds.  I decide to put some music on...to make the chores a little more enjoyable.  I start with the sheets and a song comes on...and it just "gets me".

"I Feel Home"
O.A.R.

There are few things pure in this world anymore
And home is one of the few.
We'd have a drink outside
Maybe run and hide if we saw a couple men in blue.
To me it's so damn easy to see
That true people are the people at home.
Well, I've been away but now I'm back today,
And there ain't a place I'd rather go.
I feel home
When I see the faces that remember my own.
I feel home
When I'm chilling outside with the people I know.
I feel home
And that's just what I feel.
Home to me is reality
And all I need is something real.
***
Well in the end we can all call a friend
Well that's something I know as true.
And then a thousand years and a thousand tears
I'll come finding my original crew.
Cause to me throughout eternity
There's somewhere where you're welcome to go
I said it's something free that means a lot to me
When I'm with my friends I feel home.


So, yeah, it got me.  My eyes welled up and it was almost as if Kaia knew something was amiss.  She stopped what she was doing and just stared at me.  Babies know.  Just like dogs!

The tears weren't sad, though.  They were thankful tears - thankful that I had the chance over the holidays to remind myself of the reality that awaits at home.  My village.  My home.  My reality.  Here's the post I've been meaning to write since we've been back in Italy:

We had a perfect visit home over the holidays.  Thank you to everyone who spent the time to remind me of all the wonderful that is "home" and to reassure me that we're not forgotten.  Walking through our front door to a crowd of family, the play dates, the holiday moments, the "uneventful" moments just spent visiting, and every moment in between was filled with good feelings and good people.  It all made our hearts very, very happy.  The feeling was so strong you could almost touch it...I felt like my heart was going to burst with joy as I watched my girls at home with the people they love.  Our three weeks were what I needed to get me through...because it proved that it all just doesn't disappear.  Home is still there.  You all are still there.  And it will be there, just the same - welcoming, loving - in a year and a half.  Never having been away like this, I needed to feel that.

And, before we knew it, the goodbyes snuck up on us.  I dreaded the goodbyes from the moment we landed in Michigan.  (Oh, and I should say that, literally, when the plane's wheels touched the Michigan runway, my eyes filled with happy tears!)  Goodbyes are the worst and I didn't want to go through them all again.  But there was something different about the goodbyes this time.  Knowing what we were heading back to in Italy eased my mind when I said goodbye each time.  Knowing we made it through the first four months relatively unscathed showed me that this is all very do-able.  So, I didn't cry.  It's not to say that my heart wasn't being twisted into knots knowing we were leaving home...its not to say I wasn't sad.  It's survival.  It's showing the girls that coming and going is ok - that we'll be ok.  It's not looking at this experience as sad, but as our normal.  So, I didn't cry.

I think the few tears that fell while listening to the song today were the ones meant for each of you when we said goodbye.  Tears that say thank you for everything.  Tears that say I love you.