Who says?

Yesterday, I took a little drive.

I didn't mean to take a drive. It really all started because there is a bunch of construction going on in my neck of the woods and the only way I can leave my house is by way of one of several different detours. There is literally no direct route from my house to anywhere right now. It's fine. It's all fine. Everything is FINE.

Ahem.

Anyway, as I approached the detour, I had a sudden urge to detour from my detour.

I took a left and began a long, meandering drive through the south-iest roads of the South Hill. These are country roads I know like the back of my hand. They are the roads on which I learned to drive. Roads where even now you might drive your entire route and not pass a single other car. What a blessedly wonderful way to dip your toe into the world of gas and brake pedals, turn signals, and windshield wipers. And they are the very best roads for turning up the Billy Joel station and singing Scenes from an Italian Restaurant at the top of your lungs. Both when you are 16 and when you are 48....

I found myself getting a little giddy thinking about teaching Annie to drive on these very same roads. Not giddy in the sense that I am ready for that to happen. Sweet fancy Moses, no. Thank heaven we are still a couple of years away from that. But giddy knowing that she will get a chance to master some fundamental driving basics while being surrounded by nothing more than fields and the occasional deer before having to do anything INSANE like merge onto the Ballard Bridge. (Sorry, Seattle flashback.)

Seattle peeps, can I get an AMEN?!

Speaking of Amen....while on my detour of the detour I passed the Catholic Retreat center that has been there as long as I can remember. A little further up the road I saw a Sister out for a brisk morning walk. I slowed and made sure to veer as far over to the other side of the road as I could so as to give her plenty of space and not kick up any dust on her. As I approached her she gave me the brightest smile and a friendly wave.

I know my smile was equally bright because she made my day.

In that moment, I knew for sure my detour from the detour was a great idea.

Two years ago, my most fervent prayer was simply that this place would become Home. It seems strange now and even did then that Home was so elusive. I had been born and raised here. All of my immediate family is here. I didn't even have to learn my way around. There was so much that was familiar.

And yet.... My entire adult life had been spent somewhere else. A place that had become Home. I began my married life there, raised my kids there, had friends there, survived multiple remodeling projects there....

Sometimes I'm still not sure what made us hear and listen to the whisper that said, "It's time to go."

But we did. And we did. It was time to go.

I remember I kept hearing that line in the Rascal Flatts song:

I never dreamed home would end up where I don't belong.

Even so, I miss it sometimes. And of course there are people I miss. (Home is always really about the people, right?)

But when I drive these country roads I've been driving for over thirty years... When I pick my daughter up from her bus, which happens to be at my sister's house, and tell her that "I'm just going to go in and talk to Aunt Val for a minute" (a minute, riiiiight....)... When I drive past the McDonalds in Lincoln Heights where I spent a ridiculous number of Friday nights hanging out with my high school friends... When I just "pop downtown" not worrying about time of day or traffic... When I am able to see nieces and nephews on their birthdays, or just because.... When I realize that my own daughter is herself becoming a "Spokane girl".... And when those first snowflakes fall and we are reminded once again that we won't be traveling for Christmas because Christmas is here, and we are here, and...well.....honestly....

I marvel to myself... literally marvel.... I. Live. HERE. 

Who says you can't go Home again?

A Spokane childhood was nothing if not fancy.