As the saying goes home is where the heart is and I surely felt that on our visit to Davis in April. It was so great to be in California for a whirlwind tour of my favorite places visiting my favorite people, thank you one and all. It was so comfortable to be home that I was not just a little nervous about returning to, uh, our home when the trip ended.
So where is home if I don't really live in California (right now)? Is it where my bed, my coffee maker, my furniture is? Is it where my kids and husband are? Can home be more than one place at a time? If I was going home, where was I coming from?
This has been confusing to the kids and it spilled over to me last month. While home in California I really felt like I picked up right where I had left off 9 months ago, and I wanted to keep going. Good thing I had a return ticket and a husband waiting for me.
Don't misunderstand, we are all pretty happy in Bonn. We have a life, a house and we are making friends. Work is good for Olof, school is great for the kids, and I, well, I am learning German. For those of you who I was able to spend time with on our trip home, my mantra has been, I am happy, but lack purpose. So is this what makes home - Purpose?
Purpose as a concept has been so important for me in the last months, mainly because I have made a physical move for reasons outside my own choosing. So I seek purpose mainly outside our daily life, i.e., in a job.
Ironically I was offered a job just before our trip in April and because I was going home, the offer was rescinded. This is a long and rather uninteresting story, but it made me realize that finding purpose was not really just about a job.
Instead I chose to nourish my children's and my own soul by going home for a few weeks, filling up our tanks so to speak, with love and good feelings from friends and family. And this to me was home. Could this be purpose?
We returned to Germany full of wonderful memories, 2 weeks of an action packed love-fest. My fears of tears and homesickness (the kids or mine, I am not sure which I anticipated more) were all for naught. The kids went right back to school, happy to see their friends. Their friends here. And I felt, oddly, like I was coming home. I felt my sense of place, maybe for the first time, and returned to my routine with purpose. My house, my garden, my car, my bike, my town and slowly my friends.
I even have a job, my own job, maybe not a high powered international career job, but I have a job that makes me happy and suits our life very well. I am working in the Media Center at the kids' school, and will make my place there too.
