I walked in the back door and slipped off my shoes as someone yelled "Laura?" I paused for a second and smile before returning with "No." I can hear the eruption of "Heys!" from the kitchen and I wander in. They know my voice and they know it's me and if I'm here in October on a Friday afternoon it means I came home to see them.
I think the best part about coming home is that nothing has really changed. It's a wonderful sense of nostalgia and joy and familiarity and there is nothing in the world like it. In the next room, there is soft jazz playing mixed with the sound of rain hitting the roof and my aunts and my grandma are bustling around while my mom just stares at me, nonchalantly smiling from the kitchen.
I come home every October this same weekend, the opening day of hunting season, which in my small town is its own season. I don't come home to hunt, though. I come home to experience the season change, from summer to very much fall. The trees are a bright yellow and orange and it's gray and cloudy and it rains more days than not. I love how it feels, I love how it is.
I come home when school gets overwhelming and I sit in the bakery and do my homework, just like I did when I was in high school. The sense of the familiar is comfortable and I relish in it. The rain makes me think of when I was a little kid in rain boots stomping through the puddles and building little houses out of yellow leaves.
Coming home reminds me where I came from. It reminds me that I love to be outside and that I love trees and mountains. Coming home for a weekend lets me enjoy my tiny tourist town for just long enough for me to appreciate it before it gets boring again.
Coming home is simply the best because when the world feels unstable it gives you a place to stop, to enjoy and to realize why you left in the first place. It gives you a place to regain yourself. People make you food and ask you how you are and for 2.5 seconds you're the center of attention and it's nice.
Sitting here now, I'm incredibly thankful for the seconds and the minutes and the days that I get to come home and be with my family. I'm glad for the continuity and the fact that while my world keeps spinning and twirling, that this can be my stopping point.
I'm almost overwhelmed by the simplicity of picking apples and how I find such joy in it. I find comfort in my grandma's stories and swapping memories of when I was just a little one. Coming home isn't just the best because you're not at school, it's the best because it helps to remind you who you are, for better or for worse and that is a beautiful thing.
