Old Home

"I want to go to our old home." Ella's been saying this a lot. All this time, I was thinking the transition back to the US would be harder on Jackson, but he's been here before. He seems to know the drill. But the girl was just a baby way back when. She didn't have the vocabulary (neither did we) at the time to ask where we were going or why we had left or when things would change. But now, she's all painful statements and sighs. She loves Gramma and Grampa's house, but she knows it's not really home. And she wants to know why the next home we go to won't be home either. And she really doesn't understand why we can't back to the old home, ever, even when we go back to Ireland. That old home is someone else's home now.

Everyone says home is where you are together. Home is the safe place you make for your children. As long as Matt and I are there, we're home. That's what they say. But that's not true. Family, together, safe, those are the places where we are together. But it's not home to a 3-year-old.

There are loads of awesome and amazing and totally spectacular things about the life we've chosen to live. New people, new families, adventures, fun, experiments, travel, joy, fellowship, meaning, love... literally long lists of awesome things. But in the other column, the one thing: no home.

Where we are here, is in a home, for now. Our for now home. I think she'll learn to make due.