There's No Place Like Home...No Matter Where Home Is

When you return to a place you have called home after a long absence, things always look a little different. I am back in Germany after a 6-month absence and have returned to the Munich Residence Inn where my husband and I lived for two months last fall. I know it’s funny to say that you live at hotel, but when you’re in a place for longer than a week (according to my arbitrary designation) it becomes the place you live, even if it’s only temporary. When we arrived last week, there was so much that was familiar, and yet many things were also different. To make it easy, I have compiled a list:

• Upon our arrival at the train station, there were all the familiar shops and smells of freshly baked bread, pastries and lamb roasting on a spit (ahhh, the Dönerkebabs!), but there was also a new place, one that sold BURRITOS (which are few and far between)! We have hesitated to try it out, because last fall we went to a Mexican restaurant that was highly rated on Yelp but were sorely disappointed by it.
  
  
  
• People were still waiting patiently on street corners for the green walk sign before crossing the street, even if there were no cars coming in either direction. We, however, have brought our flagrant American ways with us and boldly cross when no one is coming.
• We are back on the 5th floor of the hotel (which really means the 6th floor because of how Europeans number their floors), but we are on the side so we have a different view of the courtyard than we did last fall. Also, some of the same front desk workers are still here and so it was like seeing old friends again. But there are also quite a few new employees as well.
  
  
  
• Everything is SO GREEN here--almost impossibly green! Given how much it’s rained the last few days, however, I guess it does seem possible. We came in time to see all the leaves turn colors last year and when we left, all the trees were barren.
  
  
  
• It was always dark when Joel came home from work at 6, but there is so much more daylight now; the sun rises at 5:30am and sets at 9pm.
• Maybe I was imagining it last fall, but people seemed much more closed off and less friendly on the streets. But yesterday when the sun was shining all day, there were several elderly Fraus who actually smiled at me on the street and on the trams. and wherever there was sunshine on a patch of grass, people were lying down soaking it in (often removing most of their clothes first, completely unconcerned about it being a very small park near a busy street, or surrounded by people in the English Gardens).
• I have been on a couple of longer runs since we’ve been here and am loving the beautiful paths along the Isar River. They were covered in crunchy leaves last fall, but are now covered with spring green growth.
  
  
  
  
  
  

So those are a few quick impressions of "coming home" to Munich this time. Our children are all coming out next week and we look forward to showing them around our second home, so stay tuned for more travel adventures!

Late Night Musings of a Restless Mind

Usually I sleep pretty well, which is a blessing for a woman over 50. And thanks to seasonal allergies and Benadryl, I’ve slept especially well lately. 20 years ago, we had children who physically woke us up almost every night. I swear they had a secret schedule planned out to take turns having a nightmare or a stomach ache just so that we never got a complete night’s sleep. Our children don’t live with us anymore, but thoughts of them will sometimes wake me up in the night. They are usually vague, swirling worries in the back of my mind about whatever they happen to be struggling with at the time.

Last night was one of those nights. I was really tired when I went to bed and fell right to sleep, but when 2:30 rolled around I found myself stuck in a mental feedback loop unable to get back to sleep. My children are all at a sort of crossroads in their lives right now, with my oldest graduating from college and looking for a job, my next one thinking ahead to her graduation in December and my youngest just plain struggling to make it through his classes (and since he seems fairly unconcerned about his future, I figure someone should worry about it, right?). When these worries wake me up, I find it best to just get up and do one of two things to clear my mind. Sometimes I do what I call a “brain dump” where I write down everything I’m worrying about and that sort of transfers the words from my brain to the computer and allows me to fall back to sleep peacefully. The other way to clear my mind is to get up and read from the Bible or the Book of Mormon, because reading the scriptures always seems to help put my worries in perspective and remind me that there is a loving God that is watching over both me and my family. Last night I did both of these and then went back to bed and got the 2 extra hours of sleep that I needed.

It's funny to me that when I wake up in the mornings and re-read my "brain dump" from the middle of the night, whatever it was that was keeping me awake a few hours earlier doesn't seem quite so urgent or worrisome or important. There's probably some neurological explanation about this related to our conscious and unconscious minds, but I see it more as a form of mental sleepwalking. My body is perfectly comfortable lying in bed, but my mind insists on pacing the floor and walking in circles. After I had gotten up and taken my mind and body both for a little "walk" in the night, I laid back down in bed and told myself these words: "I am enough. I have enough. I do enough. Now rest." And drifted back to sleep.

What makes a house a home?

I just got back from a 10-day trip to Utah this week and, since Joel’s in Germany, I came home to an empty house. This was the first time I’ve come home from a trip to our new house and I found myself trying to remember, that first night back, where the silverware drawer was and where the cups were, like it was only another house that I was visiting. We’ve been in this house for 7 weeks now and it is starting to feel like our home, but it has got me thinking about just what it is that makes a house a home.

The first night we spent in our new home, I remember waking up in the night, trying to remember where the bathroom was and feeling like I was in just another (really messy) hotel room (wait a second--it still looks like a really messy hotel room…). That first week of unpacking was tough because it seemed like every box I opened had stuff in it that led to another box, which led me to another box, until I felt like I was going in circles. But we ploughed through trying to find new places for our old stuff, and occasionally I’d find a treasure in a box--meaning I knew I had mattress pads for all the beds and towels for all the bathrooms, but they had been put in random boxes for one reason or another and then would just magically appear.

We managed to get things set up in the first week to be mostly functional when our kids came home from college. We were excited for them to see the new house, but their initial reaction was more like “this is not really our home.” But they were troopers, and my daughter even spent the first night here setting up some of the Christmas decorations so that we weren’t complete Scrooges. That was the first thing that started to make it seem like our home.

My 86-year-old mom also braved the cold weather and flew from St. George, Utah, to be with us for Christmas, and she enjoyed just being able to sit in our new, sun-filled great room and read and watch all of us come and go and work to get as much as we could unpacked. Just having that memory of her here in our home makes me smile and be glad that she was willing to make such a big, physical effort to be with us (because travelling is tiring even when you’re not 86 and unused to high altitude).

The next thing that helped it feel like a home was having our friends come over for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner/nativity reading/Christmas music performances. The house was filled with more than 30 people who were all eating and talking and laughing and there was plenty of room for everyone (in past years, our tiny galley kitchen would usually be uncomfortably crammed with too many people). We always took extra care to help people to feel comfortable in our old home, and now we were seeing that happen in our new home too.

Not only did we change one house for another, though, we also had to get used to new people at church. I didn’t know how disorienting it would feel to go to church with people who don’t know me or know my background. I had been going to church in the same building and with (some) of the same people for the last 26 years, but now we are in a different building  with only a few familiar faces of people who had lived briefly in our old ward several years ago. We are only 5 miles from our old house, but it feels like an entirely new world. So I’m learning how to think about who I am right now, without letting my past experiences and service at church define me. I still have my old friends and see them regularly. But not as often as before, because we live a little farther away--we’re not truly “neighbors” anymore, the kind that can just pop in because they’re driving by and see your car in the driveway. And new relationships take time to build. Meeting someone once doesn’t make you besties. Time spent together, experiences shared together, feeling accepted and understood by someone--those are the things that make true, lasting friendships.

So after all this rambling, I’ve decided that it is time that makes a house a home--the time to create new memories of shared experiences. Spend enough time in a place, like the Residence Inn in Munich, or a friend’s basement (while you’re waiting for your house to be built), or a house for 20 years, and that will become your home. But given enough time, new and unfamiliar places can start to feel like home too. I’m grateful for every morning that I have in my new house, for each new day of learning and working and feeling more at home.