I'm sitting in my kitchen. A place I didn't know I would be in a year ago, a place I had left a year ago, when DJ and I moved from our tiny desert oasis for the big city. It's strange to be back in a space that is "ours." A space we can create and nest in. A space to rest.
Living communally was a major change for us at first, but it later became another sense of home. A space shared by people upholding the same value of community and friendship (and somewhat the same idea of what a clean house looks like). We learned how to work in a group, and how to play our part, whether that was our share of utilities or cleaning out the refrigerator. The "team" or group dynamic was a fresh new way to experience home living.
And now we are back to a space just for us. It took me a couple of days to realize no one else would be coming home to this space. No one else was going to walk through the door, and the dog and cats we had lived with weren't lying around in every spot I thought I saw them move in.
Moving causes so much shifting. A shifting in your inner spirit, where you realize a space you once labeled as home was no longer there anymore and another space would be taking over. It's unsettling, learning new rhythms, new oddities like the kitchen on the right, instead of the left or a light with a turning knob instead of a switch. It also shifts part of your identity that you had found and expressed in that space, but now it's gone. You have to remake a new space the "making a house a home" part of living and moving and life.
There are so many spaces in this world that have carried the name "home" for me. And just as many people who created the home in those spaces. Change is inevitable in life and I am learning to embrace it. This is probably one of the most comforting changes we've had in a long time. Back in the state we met, the earth that raised us, the trees that shaded us. Back to Old Bay-covered hands and the weather changing from spring to winter as fast as the fairies in Sleeping Beauty changed Aurora's ball gown from blue to pink. Back to the old familiar, and the new unfamiliar all meshed into one. Living near DC, a city we hadn't explored before and now adventuring through it together. Near family, but far enough away to create our own little haven, our own world. A place we call home.
