Home Is a Tricky Thing

I've been trying to make Home Is Where I Lay My Hat and Home Is Where the Heart Is fit for so long. I feed myself these words. I say them and they've been said to me, often. I dance around with these phrases. I make big signs out of them and chant them with a conviction that I want to believe. I try so hard to make them true, but in the end I can't turn them into anything but words.

Husband and I are confused again. We made the mistake of going to Santa Monica this weekend and having lots of fun. I'm kicking myself for the easy, good times now. I used to think it was my imagination, but Santa Monica has a smell to it and every time we visit I roll down the car windows to breathe it in. It smells like Hometown. We hung out with Husband's best friend visiting from back east, and instantly Husband craved Hometown too. And we're confused again.

No matter how good the town where we live now has been to us -- the perfect place in many ways -- hometowns try to lure us back. Most times we pretend like we don't hear it. I say, "Home is where we make it, Papi." And he says, "True." We haven't even talked about this for almost a year as we go about our everyday, filling the groove of our Life for Children. But Saturday we drove back from a great day with the children in Santa Monica where it smelled so good, and he and I said nothing. We knew exactly what each other was feeling. We were having a hard time stuffing the feeling back into its lockbox. We weren't supposed to feel this way again.

Husband may have an opportunity to get a new job in LA. It would be a new industry for him. And it all sounds exciting, the whole thing, the moving, the opportunity, us answering the call back home. But then we get nervous. We have one foot in the practical where we've built a small piece of comfortable suburbia for ourselves, and sure, we fight off city yearnings, but our kids have roots here, and there's nothing wrong with our life. And then we have one foot involuntarily inching towards the pull; a life that fits us, where we aren't always trying to fit it, and where we may be able to do more exciting, life-calling things, --Husband expecially -- than a semi-safe, soul-sucking job. But usually we spend SO MUCH TIME weighing out the pros and cons -- ignoring our gut pull -- that we end up always choosing to stay where we are, y'know, for the children. I mean, maybe this feeling will pass again. Sooner than later, I hope. It's hard to fend off sometimes.

But if Husband were to say Let's Go, let's just go for it because, y'know Mami, our children will always be fine because of US and nothing else; if he were to say let's live this adventure together and trust our gut this one time no matter how scary and unsure, I'd make it work with him. I'd pitch to work my job from home and I'd stop internet shopping and I'd find us a little two bedroom apartment in Santa Monica under a billion dollars -- and I'd fix it up and make it ours because home is what you make it or where the heart pumps or where the hat goes, or maybe where you secretly wish you were.

Then again, maybe home is the place that has been good to you and your children no matter the lack of deep-rooted connection. I guess we'll just have to weigh the pros and cons, and I'll pray for this feeling to pass, and I'll tell Husband not to drive me up to Santa Monica again until we're willing to really take a chance, until we're ready to come home.