Flipping pages

This week has been a strange one to say the least.  I'm back in Coeur d'Alene, the city that holds nearly all of my childhood memories, but it feels different this time.  None of my girls are here, no snow is on the ground, and there is little if any activity to speak of.  Cold, brown, and just ugh.  Sorry, February.  You're not my favorite.  Granted, I am only here for a week and a half, but it feels longer than that, maybe because I don't have much else to occupy my time that doesn't involve packing or repacking or looking for jobs/future apartments online.  And although the idea of packing up my life here--or whatever is left--should be emotional and overwhelming and exhausting, it's not.  It all feels so impersonal to me, but only because I picked up and left a long time ago--both physically and figuratively.


For the past five years, this city has been a stopping place.  A place to catch my breath and prepare for the next looming change.  And while it still carries remnants of home because my mom and dad both live here (for now), it has changed.  A lot.  And I have as well.  I no longer come home to the house I grew up in.  Most of the people I associate with home don't live here anymore.  And every so often, I look around and see new buildings or businesses that weren't there the last time I was.  I guess you could say that we're outgrowing each other, this city and I.  I know I can always come back here and find the familiarity in places and people, but it's not the same and strangely, I'm okay with that.


After all the changes and moves, I've come to realize that the word "home" is more like a state of being, and one that we like to associate with a place that then gives it permanence and more meaning.  A sense of home is more than just a familiar house or city.  It's where you find a balance of comfort in your surroundings, love in the people you spend time with, and contentment in who you are within all of that.


And as I sit here, in my mom's office surrounded my a mountain range of brown cardboard boxes, I can't help but let the excitement and prospect of a new home distract me from what I really should be doing: packing.  Nope.  Instead I sit here going through old books that tell the story of my life.  Books my mom used to read to me when I couldn't even say the alphabet.  Books I read in middle school for reading points.  Books on the high school summer reading lists that I absolutely despised and "read" the week before school started in an emotional end-of-summer frenzy.  And then there are the books I fell in love with, those that transformed my college experience and made me want to be an English major, and those that I've read multiple times because they themselves hold a piece of home in their pages.  They're all here, telling my story as they tell their's.


I pack thousands of pages into boxes and try to imagine the shelves of the room they will be replaced upon.  Home.  It's someplace close, I can sense it, feel it, and almost touch it.  The walls may be a different color and the city a little rainier, but the hominess?  No problem there, cause I'm bringing it with me anywhere I go.