Long Avenue

I am winding up day five.

Day five of one of the strangest weeks of my life.

Not strange in a bad way.

Not strange in a way that makes me want it to end.

Strange.

Peculiar.

Not familiar.

Since Sunday night I have been living and sleeping in Winchester. In the house I grew up in. With my two littlest sisters, three dogs, and my mother's car.

I have not spent more than two nights here on Long Avenue since I moved out almost two and a half years ago.

All kinds of people have all kinds of definitions of home.

It's where your heart is.

Or your bed.

Or where you send your mail.

I have never had an emotional attachment to a house. Or an address. We moved too often as children for me to become attached to any house we lived in.

It's not about the house.

It's about what changes.

Since Sunday night I have been noticing little things. Things that stay the same. Things I remember. Things that are new. I find myself asking questions. Forgetting where we keep the measuring cups, but remembering how you have to lift and push the cabinet door under the sink to get it to close. Like how to pull just right into the driveway so you're not in the street, but you don't take out the front porch.

I remember to duck my head when going down the stairs. And how tricky it is to shave your legs in our shower stall.

One thing I have yet to get over after five days is the strange dog who lives here.

Henry.

A black puppy Olivia found in the library parking lot last summer. She named him promptly, definitely. He became a member of the Long Avenue household. But that was not my household anymore.

So I come in and there is Molly. Sweet, old Molly. She can't hear anymore. She has cataracts and still howls and whines like a banshee. Then there's Zoe. She's fat now. But still the same 3 and 1/2 week old puppy I held on my chest and fed around the clock years ago. My puppies. Familiar, hairy faces. Then here comes Henry. Galloping through the house, pawing at me like he wants a handshake. He wants to be my friend. And I want to be his.

But he's a stranger in my house.

Or... I'm a stranger in his. Either way. We step on each other's toes. And he hasn't learned that I'm the boss around here.

Probably because I'm not.

There used to be a huge recliner in the middle of the living room floor. It's gone now. I remember when it was moved--coming home to a room that suddenly was strange, suddenly was unfamiliar. Not in a bad way.

Much the same as how I've felt this week.

What you remember is not the same.

What you remember has changed. As will all things.

The back porch is where I used to get my hair cut, late on summer nights, and a boy... who is now gone... told me I was pretty.

The driveway where my first love kissed me for the first time.

I sit here now, listening to the piano music from the "good" room. But it is not Dad's fingers on the keys. They are hers... and she has a different sound, a different music coming from her fingertips.

Dinner is cooking. Piano music is playing. It is fall and the sky is dark outside the kitchen window. Things are the same.

And entirely different.

Staying here on Long Avenue this week made me think. A lot.

About where home is.

About how there are some things I'll never forget.

And while Long Avenue is not my home anymore, the little girls (who are not so little anymore) who sleep here are.

And no matter how old I get, I will remember how to make a chocolate chip pie.

And even when I almost burn the house down when boiling rice, I will know which doors to open to make all the smoke go away.

And whether I am in my own bed or lying on a king sized mattress on the living room floor, when I roll over and see her sleeping beside me because she doesn't want to sleep alone tonight, I will find myself at home.

Because home is not a place.

It's a state, a peace, of mind.

Sunday I will leave Winchester and home will follow me to a little apartment near the projects in Lexington. To a cat who likes to follow me to the bathroom. And a neighbor who plays their music too loud. And I will know how far to turn the sink knobs to get the water just hot enough. Or how to tilt the stereo to make it play a CD.

May you find home tonight. Wherever you are. May you feel that peace that settles in behind your ribs and the softness in your temples...

And carry it with you.