One day, we drove to a part of town I hadn’t visited before. I hadn’t seen photos and didn’t know what to expect. The highway here isn’t surrounded by trees alone—you see houses, hills in the distances, buildings—so you know if it’s familiar or not.
It wasn’t familiar.
On the short drive home, I thought about how each of us in our little boxes on the hillside* can venture out into the world, turn right, left, up, down, and around, experience all sorts of things, and then, directly or roundabout-ly, find our way home.
Home.
Not just to the general vicinity we come from, not just to people who speak our language (though sometimes that feels incredible enough), but to the exact place where our people and our things await our return.
We take this for granted most of the time, but isn’t it a miracle? You leave something somewhere, you go far away from it, and often (most of the time, if you live in a safe place), when you return, it’s still there. After minutes. Hours. Sometimes after years.
It may not be exactly the same, but it’s there.
And even if it’s been only hours, are you ever certain you know what you’ll find? Have you ever had surprises, like a package you didn’t expect, a person you didn’t expect, a home that looks different from how you left it?
(In the most innocuous-but-annoying version of this possible, my then-16-year-old brother and friend X went into the bedroom of a mutual friend Y who was out of town and spooned it—meaning, COVERED EVERY SURFACE WITH LITTLE PLASTIC ICE CREAM TASTER SPOONS—and then filled the room with balloons. When tired friend B got home, he opened the door to his room, closed it, and went to sleep on the couch.)
On that drive back home, we reached an area I recognized. And I felt what I feel every time I return to a place I know after being away: an exhale of relief.
And a small start of surprise every time we make a turn, and what I think will be there is, actually, there.
*Song lyrics by Malvina Reynolds
This Glass Has Water 
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