Making Another Home

I should have remembered. If you want to feel at home in a new domicile, leave for a couple of days. When you return after staying in the anonymity of a hotel room, everything in your new spot suddenly looks quite familiar and completely your own.

When I returned from Pranburi, that shift in perspective miraculously took place and my apartment was mine, truly mine. It was a fabulous birthday gift, as was the sun that woke me on the morning that I turned sixty.

I spent the day getting rid of the television that had failed me on election day--no CNN, plenty of Russia Today--and filling the space with a little more furniture. I was presented with a weird, lovely, prehistoric looking flowering succulent and suddenly I had a living room. And a home. (And a world full of festive Loy Kratong high-range explosives outside my bedroom window that kept me awake and sitting in my new armchair for most of the first night that I was sixty.)

The next morning I found out that my very dear oldest son had spent two days in the hospital and for twenty-four hours none of my domestic transformations meant a damned thing. I was ready to walk away from anything that I had here and go back to be near my children--the one who was hospitalized and the one who spent time with him when he was there. No things are comforting when you are worried about someone you love.

But today I received a reassuring message that all was truly well, and I'd had enough sleep that I could let myself believe that. The sun has gone, but my new living room is extremely pleasing--and once again I know I've found a home.