Home

For some unknown reason (that is not facetious...I really don't know why), this morning I found myself thinking about the definition of home. Elise and I use the word "home" in different contexts, and I find it interesting that the word will continue to evolve for us, taking on new meanings and new connotations.

Sometimes, when we talk about things that are happening in Florida, myself or, possibly, Elise will say, "....at home." meaning back in Florida, which I find curious since we have few intentions of ever living in Florida again (the townhouse we own that we can't sell there notwithstanding), but I suppose isn't too surprising given that we have spent the last 10 years of our lives there. It will, most likely, for sometime to come, have a strong gravitational pull that only time and the accumulation of more memories outside the state lines will break.

Otherwise, we most often use the word "home" when indicating our temporary corporate housing, our apartment, our often claustrophobic three rooms 18-stories above the wailing ambulances and wailing hockey fans that Sam never wants to return to after an excursion, yet where, ironically, he and Pete and Elise and I are most comfortable because it is the place where we all come together and laugh and eat and sleep and get on each other's nerves and draw stories. No matter where we go, no matter how awful the housing, electricity, bars on the windows, civil unrest down the block, home will be this base we tag every night.

Just as Sam's bed gets shorter before our eyes and Pete goes from being someone you cradle while feeding, to a baby that bounces in his bouncey chair so vociferously you literally have to hold him down to feed him, to a small boy sitting in a chair across the table beaming at you, it would be easy to believe that life in Florida--or anywhere, for that matter--is held in suspended animation. I need to remind myself that just because we are not there, life has not stopped. Our friends' children grow, too, and their relationships evolve and deepen and, possibly, split apart or fracture, just as our alliance is tightens.

We wake early. at 6 or shortly before. Pete coos in his crib from the other room, just as Sam did at that age. Sam, if he hasn't already insinuated himself between Elise and I, pads across the carpet in his footie pj's, carrying his tattered yellow blanket not unlike Linus would. This morning, I quickly whipped up a batch of banana pancakes. Though both boys were breaking down early--Pete because his gums are waging war with, not one, but two tooth buds, and Sam...well, Sam woke up not once...not twice...but three times in tears. We have no idea why. We can only attribute it to the heat and bad dreams--though both boys were breaking down early, we strapped them into the stroller, crossed the street and walked to Starbucks. This is our neighborhood, our home, for now. I put my sneakers on and power them through the streets. I ran shamelessly in Florida, infamous, I think or have been told, in our neighborhood for the distances I would push Sam. I do the same here, because I know no different. Now, we hurl two boys down the bicycle paths winding through Arlington, when we can. Half the people we pass marvel and smile, the other half sneer because we take up too much room, I think. Don't know. Don't care. We don't walk.

It makes me excited to get to, not only Brazil, but everywhere we will go even though I don't know those places yet, to not only see the physical layout of our house, but to meet and know the nature of what will become our home. To speculate or wonder too much, would diminish the present. Sam and Pete only know the present. Truth be told, Elise and I don't know much more than they do. Our assignment, in theory, could change tomorrow. The present is all that is certain.

I may not be crazy about being 18 stories off the ground, but there are worse places to be. We see birds when we look out the window, airplanes land and cranes swing toward us as though they were going deposit cement into our bedroom. This is home.