Home, But Not For Long

I arrived home from Athens at 11:00 PM last night after more than 22 hours of travel to get here. I rolled into my apartment and dropped my bags. I did not go to sleep. I sat for a bit, thinking about how odd it felt to be here, displaced in my own place, a feeling of unfamiliar with all the familiar about me. I wondered at the silence after three weeks of traveling with another person. I contemplated the space and ease of things after three weeks of cramming and jamming, struggling with rooms to small, bathrooms that didn't work, taxis with no wheelchair access.

Indeed coming home has a sort of quasi-denial to it, especially on first arrival. It feels unreal, as if the trip was reality and home is the dream. It took me a while to settle in, to adjust to the thoughts. I struggled into bed. Then, sleep, precious and most blessed, came to me slowly. My own bed, with its rail and room, extra pillows and mattress fit to me; it came and took me away from travel shock.

This morning I quickly fell back into my normal routine. I am surprised at how easy it is to adapt to the commonplace of home, how quickly I step into the patterns of my life; a slow, long awakening; a shower that works for me; a bathroom where I am comfortable. These are the things in life that make the routine easier, the advantages of having hearth and home setup, ready, useable.

Yet here I sit, missing Tuscany and the green hillsides, covered in vineyards, olive groves and the emerald of new crops. Here I sit, missing the Duomo in Milan and Risotto in the Galleria, the Natural History Museum in London and the Uffizi in Florence, the balcony overlooking the caldera in Santorini and a glass of wine. If home is so good, why do I miss these things so?

I am the sailor come home, into my own port, ship tied to the dock being readied for the next voyage. I am the wanderer come to the familiar, the traveler at rest. Soon the urge will fall upon me again, the urge to go somewhere, to explore once again. In fact, I think I might look online at something like a cruise in the fall. After all, it's not as if I am saving for my retirement or a rainy day. In spite of the sun outside, today is the rainy day. I am going to travel again, soon.