No place like home

I'm beginning to think Dorothy was on to something.

It seems that there really is no place quite so wonderful as home. I never thought I would find myself saying that. I am, after all, the one who gets bored easily with her surroundings. I am the one who loves international adventure. I am the one who has not lived in the same place for more than a year since moving out of her parents’ house in 1997. I am the one who can sleep anywhere, anytime. Or at least I was.

Is all of that changing? Lately I have been finding it difficult to sleep well on couches, futons or even beds with substandard (according to me) pillows…and the last time I tried to sleep on the floor it lasted 20 minutes. Likewise, while I have been living at this address for only 10 months, the idea of changing it doesn’t appeal to me at the moment. But before I decide that I’m not in Kansas anymore, I still feel the urge to take part in any overseas opportunity that I am presented with. After talking to my boss about a program a sister college staffs in Panama, for example, I came home with desires to pack it all up and head south. So, maybe this is a gradual thing.

The appeal of “home,” I think, is the level of comfort. No matter how often I visit a place, how relaxed I feel there, how much I “belong” in that environment, and how much I don’t want to leave, it really gives me joy to walk in my front (that’s a figurative ‘front’) door. There’s something about having the freedom to make your own schedule without coordination with others, maintaining a self-appointed level of cleanliness, preparing and eating foods that no one else likes, decorating according to your own personal style, etc., etc., that make “home” so appealing. These are all based on my single-dwelling situation, but the concepts can be expanded to include all the people in the household and still apply. When you’re visiting someone else, you have to fit into their way of doing things, but at home, you (that’s the plural or the singular ‘you’) decide. That's hard to beat.

Just for the record, I'm not becoming reclusive. My visitation schedule is not about to change at all. I will still likely live outside of Canada again. But I do realize that I'm getting old.