Destination: Home

 It was really quiet this rainy Black Friday morning.

No one in my home was awake when I was frothing milk for my rosemary brown sugar vanilla latte. 

Comforted by the soft whir of their sleep, I sipped my creamy latte and watched daylight dawn on our second Thanksgiving weekend in our new state. 

It feel right.

Like home.

No one wanted to leave.

From dinner last night with everyone's favorites to annual games of Uno and Spades to movies until everyone fell asleep, no one wanted to stir.

That was the gift. The joy and laughter of the youngest daughter with the youngest son, their banter as only siblings can have.

When the first ones started to stir a few hours later, awakens to the smells of my husband flipping bacon and adding cheese to the eggs, it was the moment when joy just enveloped me.

Home has been their destination.

This year, my older daughter is visiting her college boyfriends' family and my youngest son came home with his girlfriend. The youngest daughter was chilling with us and while we were snuggling on the sofa last night munching on big bowls of my husband's homemade popcorn, all I could do was smile.

As a mother of adults and emerging adults, any bits of their time is a gift. I realize that more now that I am the age my father was when I used to fly home on the occasional holiday. My presence was the gift and all I wanted to do was sit with him and sip coffee.

This year, as the vaccine has made some bits of what 2019 holiday felt like seem within reach, home has been a destination for so many who could not travel last year. Then while there, so many have ventured out to the shops on Black Friday to get those gifts they think will not be there in three weeks. Home and the memories of it still offer the promises of acceptance and comfort.

That no one in my house was eager to get up at the crack of dawn to fight crowds intrigued me a bit.

They just wanted to chill and watch movies, eat whatever we were making, and for brief moments in their twenties, not have to worry about what was swirling around them in the world.

I want that for them, for all of my children and grandchildren, to find acceptance and support, to find comfort and care, to just be able to exist in the ways that nourish and refresh them. The world is big enough and broad enough and beguiling enough.

Sometimes, just sometimes, home is the sweetest destination.