home

As I sit in a hotel airport in Barcelona, awaiting a crisp 4 am wake up call for my flight back to America(!!), that song called “Home” by Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeroes plays in my head. I first heard that song live at a music festival in Houston. Whenever I hear it now, I think of every cheesy high school graduation post and sappy relationship video on the internet. The truth is, cheesy or not, that song has never has never been more relevant than now.

“Home is wherever I’m with you.”

Home is a feeling. Home is not a place that can be summarized in 900 square feet. Home is all the feelings, stories, memories, and smells.

Since moving to Europe, a lot of ‘home’ comforts have been removed, but so many beautiful relationships have been planted and grown fruitful. Even just five months after our move to Girona, I’m nostalgic saying goodbye for a couple weeks. “Those are the steps I was sitting on with two girls when I really, finally felt like I had started making community in Girona,” “that’s the coffee shop below our apartment I can always hang out with my friends who barista there when I’m lonely or too tired to make it up the stairs,” “those are the gardens I go to when Neilson’s out of town and I’m really homesick.” I’m getting emotional just typing it all.

This morning, Neilson and I parted ways-he’s headed off to race the Tour de France and I’m headed home for some family time in home sweet Texas. These past few weeks, we’ve been cleaning out our apartment to prepare for guests and future moves in the coming months. Due to the nature of both of our jobs, as we step into the next few months’ “plans,” we do so with a very loose attachment.

So we wait. We pack. We plan for what we can, and we try to not anticipate the time we will be apart. And that’s when the song starts playing in my head. I feel so blessed to call so many places “home” because of the people and memories that live there. I’m home'sick’ for my family in Houston, for my friends in Sacramento, but all the while knowing that any time I can spend with them, probably means being on a different continent as Neilson.

Every goodbye is bittersweet, but it also makes every hello so much sweeter.

Wanted to finish off with a translation of this little poem I found in a magazine.

“Home”

It’s a blue house

Leaning against the hill.

You come there by foot, you do not knock.

Those who live there threw away the key.

May our homes be a place that welcomes rest. May we cling to our memories and time with loved ones, rather than our clothes and belongings.

xx f