People talk about going home for Christmas. For me, home is really about people. I don’t live where I grew up, and I love building my home where I am now. But sometimes home goes with me other places.
One of my favorite holiday traditions is getting together with my childhood friend Bekah who is married to another long-time friend of mine. They have three kids who are close in age to Cate and Ben. Some years we get together with other friends of ours, but sometimes it’s just our two families.
Either way, getting together with her is like coming home – regardless of where we actually are. Last year it was a fancy restaurant with just a table full of adults. This year is was brunch with our two families – party of 10, please.
I also got to spend a few hours with my childhood neighbor-turned-best-friend Katie. We can sit and talk wherever we are like no time has lapsed between visits – this time it was in a brightly colored, noisy arcade. Fun fact: We actually used to work at the amusement park that houses the arcade. Now called The Renaissance Fun Park, we were actually there so my kids and their cousins could burn off some energy. They were in the house for DAYS, thanks to all the rain. And, well, all boy moms everywhere understand that doesn’t work.
So while they played laser tag and arcade games, we talked. We reminisced about when we were employees there in the summers of 1997 and 1998, when it was called The Park at Middletown. We took a selfie in the rain because we had to see what had changed and what had stayed the same.
There are a couple other friends I didn’t get to connect with like I wanted to, but I did get to see more family than usual in Louisville this past weekend. Two aunts, two uncles, my grandpa, a cousin and her husband plus my more immediate parents, brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew. I did miss my sister, brother-in-law and their growing family, but they were at home in Buffalo, NY, adjusting to being a family of five with newborn twins.
Walking down memory lane with friends and making new memories is what coming home truly is about for me. The visits don’t always go as planned. I usually want more time before returning to my physical home – which is where my favorites live – but then I get back here and remember it’s where I’m supposed to be.
Here is home too. Sometimes it seems like everything is always changing, but going home and coming home always reminds me of the important foundations that remain the same. Really, life is more about being at home wherever you are than it is actually coming or going home – all while we wait for our eternal home. {Tweet that.}
Who or where is home to you?
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