My living room has big corner windows that look out over a somewhat suburban neighborhood. When I sit on the couch, I see a big slice of sky, a lot of telephone wires, and just there, between the sturdy trunks of some old Douglas fir trees, a tiny blue square of Puget Sound. When it’s foggy and I can’t see the water, I can hear the foghorns on the freighters and ferries as they go by. There’s a man who walks by my house every day. I can tell you what the weather is by looking at his hands. He’s there, every day, but when it’s cold, he’s got ski gloves on.
In my backyard, I have scattered lettuce and kale seedlings — the squirrels have been digging up everything and ruining my ambitions for a fall crop of greens. The sweet pea seedlings blew over in the last big storm. The hummingbird feeders rattle on the metal posts they share with the laundry line and the hammock clips. I have big fluffy red and yellow dahlias, still blooming late in the season, a gift for helping a friend clean tubers on a cold spring afternoon on her expansive back deck.
There are frequent batches of soup cooking up on my kitchen stove and a pile of magazines and library books that want reading on the coffee table. There is napping to be done and dumb but entertaining TV shows to watch and visiting with friends who live in different parts of town. There is a full array of exotic supermarkets to visit — today, the Vietnamese grocery was broadcasting a dramatic piano driven soundtrack that annoyed the 20 something guy at the checkout stand. “It’s NOT GOOD,” he said in his heavy accent as he scanned our coffee. The International District was brightly lit in the fall sun, big Chinese families filed in and out of the dim sum places, a woman walked across the plaza carrying a tiny, smiling, very fluffy dog in her arms.
I’m a little bit behind on my work — the result of a pernicious cold. There is a mountain of laundry that needs transporting from the upstairs closet to the downstairs washing machine. Someone should do a little vacuuming and put the dust bunnies on notice. The apple trees need compost and the BBQ needs cleaning and this morning, the big cutting board snapped in half so it wants replacing. My suitcase from last weekend has shown no signs of unpacking itself and I don’t seem to be doing anything about it.
We exist in a rocking imbalance of domestic activity versus lethargy. As proof of my commitment to this state of the union, yesterday afternoon, I napped for two hours.
We don’t have much planned for travel this fall. Any upcoming adventures are scheduled to take place after we cross the horizon into next year. This is okay with me. I like sitting on my couch watching the sky change colors. I like playing silly games on the Wii (we have serious ski competition at our house). I like getting the weather report by taking notice of what my neighbors are wearing. I like eating home cooking, I like running to the grocery store, messing up the kitchen, washing the dishes, and doing that all over again. I like endless cups of tea and listening to the radio and weekly trips to the library and meeting friends for big diner breakfasts. Right now, I even like my day job, the work that allows me not only to be a part time adventurer but to also have dust bunnies and laundry and a couch with a view of the sky.
C&P Coffee: A lovely cafe about a mile from my front door.
It is easy, when you stew in travel, to get suckered into the idea that traveling all the time is somehow the better choice. There’s less said about the wonders of staying home, of working to have a home to return to. I have no doubt that I will be again blindsided by an irrational desire to head out to see, oh, the extreme tides of Nova Scotia. (Seriously, I hear they’re awesome.) Or to wake up in a campsite under the stars in the Atacama desert in Bolivia. It’s happened to me before — I sit on my couch and read or I go to a museum and see some art or I watch a movie and I’m flattened by wanderlust for Ethiopia or Ecuador. But that feeling exists in conjunction with the absolute delight of putting on coffee for guests who have shown up with treats from our neighborhood bakery.
Before I had a home of my own to come back to, return was always painful. Where was I going to live? Where was I going to work? Who was going to pick me up at the airport? Now, those questions are all solved. The husband picks me up, often with a cup of tea sitting in the cup holder, takes me for pho if I’m hungry (we go to the same place, every time), and then hauls my bag into the house where it waits for me. I love, after being lost and jittery and overwhelmed and excited and amazed, to wake up in my bed knowing exactly where I am. I love traveling. But also, I love being home.
Are you in my head, woman?! Seriously, sometimes I do wonder… given that your Tweets so often speak to me, too.
Up until last week, I’d been traveling like madwoman since Memorial Day. I am so thrilled to say that I have no definite trips planned until June (yay for Vancouver and TBEX11). Surely, we’ll enjoy weekend ski getaways and a spring break vacation with the kiddos and a press trip or two that will pop up before then, but man-oh-man am I happy to be home. So pleased that I won’t be hopping on a plane at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I love love love where I live. Love kicking back with family (hubs makes my coffee in the morning; better than room service). So happy to just recharge here in the coming months. And when wanderlust hits, as I’m sure it will come January, I’ll be ready.
We try to avoid the Xmas/Txgiving crush as best we can and just stay put. It’s too insane, it sucks all the fun out of it.
And yes, I’m in your head. 🙂
Really liked this post, Pam. I think it does an excellent job of communicating one of our favorite dichotomies; something that many people find surprising and also a bit confusing. We LOVE travel and we LOVE coming/being home. How could we not?! We are in your hood in this ridiculously beautiful part of the world, and we revel in it. What we enjoy so much is venturing out, tasting other parts of the world – uncovering the things that make us different and learning about all things that unite us – and then coming back to the warm nest we have built here in the Northwest.
There was a time when we had big designs on traveling long, LONG term. However, we realized that we enjoy travel so much more when we know that we have a cozy, welcoming recharge spot back in Seattle.
Loving home and loving travel are definitely not mutually exclusive.
I like this very much! And, agreed: Pho is probably the best comfort food on the planet.
Nice…as I still struggle with the being home and the wanderlust that remains…I want it all..now I just have to figure out how!
I feel it. Here here.
A lovely paean to home. After three weeks of nonstop activity ourselves, it’s a relief to spend today at home in domestic pursuits.
Autumn must be a time when we all settle into our winter nest. Your post is completely delightful and expresses so well why it is that we are no longer nomads. I discovered a wonderful poem recently with this sentiment,
“… and there is nowhere to go but home, which is nowhere to be found and yet is here, unlost, solid, the very ground on which you stand but cannot visit …” George Szirtes
That’s a lovely quote. Can I get a link to the whole thing?
I think I love you. And this post. I love both of you for articulating so exactly what has been stewing in my head for the past few years of my 16 years of constant travel (or, more accurately, perpetual, everchanging expattery). I’m a huge, huge fan of Home and coziness and feeling centered in a place. It’s underrated.
Stop it, you’re embarrassing me.
Strangely, I’m a homebody; I can completely identify with the sentiment of this post. All of the details you’ve sewn into it are like the steamy bouquet of home-soaked tea.
Really liked this post, Pam. The trick, of course, is to find the right balance.
I leave Thurday for Chicago, a city full of my own family and history, one that I love with my whole heart. It makes the view of the grey outside my window all the more dear because I already cannot wait to return.
Well said. As someone else who loves to have pots of soup on the stove and visitors dropping by, I totally grok the idea of just being comfortable at home. Sometimes I get the feeling that if someone is traveling *all* of the time, they’re missing out on half (or some percentage) of what makes life worth living.
brava, pam. there’s something about home, that we make it so COMFY. the books, the food we know and love, our own spices and supplies for great cooking, and your own PLACE. you’ve nailed it here. that is what is so great about travel – we can go explore, and then are LUCKY enough to come HOME.
I’m with Kara: recharging at home is sooooo nice. On the other hand, really, go to Nova Scotia. It’s my favourite place on earth!
Thank you for writing this, Pam. It’s so refreshing to read a traveler talk about how nice it can be sometimes to just be home. It makes me feel a little less like a freak in the travel world knowing there are others like me. 🙂
Lovely post. I don’t feel at home anywhere anymore, but I think that is more the lack of the spouse bringing me tea — well, coffee or wine in my case, but same general point. I admire your sense of peace.
This has got to be one of my favorite pieces of yours. Kudos to a healthy dose of realism!