Home (Day 34, Year 2)


I lived in Vermont, right after I lived on Rodman Street and I had graduated from Temple. It was quite the shift from urban to rural; subways to trails; skyscrapers to mountains. Vermont had never been on my list of places to live and work. But sometimes opportunity finds you when you need it most. 

And 22 year old Trish needed to get out of the city, lest it ate her alive. It wasn't the city's fault. It was just that my soul needed fresh air and a change of perspective and Vermont called, and so I went. 

I moved there on October 15 and two days later, on my first day of work at my first job, it snowed.

Vermont was the complete reverse from my life traipsing through the city. 

I loved it there. 

I have this memory of an evening spent at a friend of a friends for a soup and knitting night. The friend is still a friend and a forever one. We worked together at The International Ecotourism Society. She is perhaps one of the few real friends I made in Vermont and as such was the unknowing cruise director in my Vermont social life. We learned to knit together; and she had a friend (Jess always had so many friends!) who also liked to knit. That friend invited us over for soup.

I think of this night nearly everyday. And not because anything exciting happened or anything traumatic. But because it was such a lovely, peaceful evening in a beautiful home with really good soup and lovely yarn and dropped stitches and laughter and it felt like exactly what I always wanted for myself. 

I wanted a home that felt just like that. 

It's a quaint memory--novel and sweet and humble. All I ever wanted was a home filled with the people I loved and good meals and creative endeavors and laughter. A place where people came in and out and where our lives happened. A place where I could make soup for my friends and also snuggle up with Mike. A place where I'd have a garden and bookcases and knicks in the floor that came with a story. 

If anything this night was my vision board. 

As such, I used to think of this evening as something to strife for--a home I'd have someday and maybe that day would be when my kids were grown or I was old. 

But, tonight, I realized, I have that home. And it is not just because I created it. It is because of the wonderful friends and beautiful family that fill it. It is my beautiful neighbors who are such good, trustworthy, solid friends. It is my kids who fill it with their lives. It is my husband who works so hard and hates to go to bed without me. It is all that beautiful contented love that surrounds me. 

It's home. And it's exactly everything I ever wanted. 



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