Home…

Greetings from Cape Cod, Massachusetts!

Home for the long Memorial Day weekend, in between organizing closets, coloring with chalk on the driveway with my niece and nephew, and riding 25 miles on my bicycle, I have been enjoying the peacefulness that comes with coming home. My old bedroom, though now occupied with my mother’s papers and my father’s computer gadgets, still has one walk in closet that’s all mine. In there I keep summer clothes, warm pajamas, old sneakers, and large sweatshirts for late day walks on the beach. There are some of my books, framed paintings, and a stack of handmade sweaters my late grandmother knit for me, but also in this closet (which reminds me of my tiny apartment in Manhattan), is the same full-length mirror I stared into when I was ten. Looking back at me now the reflection shows the same, but different person. Wiser and taller (but not by much), the woman looking back at me is thirty years older. And while she has changed a lot, some things remain the same. Like the need (dare I say joy?) to re-fold her clothes on every visit or that her parents still come into her bedroom early each morning to wake her up to go for a bike ride or a long walk. And each time she still jumps out of bed to join them. Throwing on the same clothes she took off the night before, she pulls her long hair (though now colored!) up into a ponytail and sprints down the stairs. In the same spacious kitchen she finds a platter of sliced fruit and fresh baked blueberry oatmeal muffins (her favorite) on the table next to a vase of peonies. She sits down to tie her sneakers and picks at the fruit before going outside. There she finds her parents sitting on chairs, newspaper sections littered around them, waiting for her. This is home, she smiles.