being home

Travelling home is always a combination of tricky and wonderful.  This trip perhaps particularly so.  Tricky of course, because there are so many people I want to see and connect with.  Painful because I no matter how long the vacation is, I can never find enough time to fit everything and everyone in.  Which sucks.  A lot.

Wonderful because my moms are amazing with my littles, and spend loads of time, playing on the floor with them, finding creative activities like pottery (Grammie is a potter) and art stuff, going swimming and to the park, and all kinds of nurturing and loving them up (Nannie is a play therapist).  The kids have it made, and I get a break from the constant of being needed, which I find exhausting sometimes.  A win all around.

Also wonderful because I get to soak in old haunts, and as I do so re-visit the person I used to be in those old haunts.   Because I get to see old friends, who remember me before I lost my zing and tell me they see that life seeping back in.  Who remind me that I am clever and funny and a hottie-Mchot-hot; worth far more than I give myself credit for.  That I am loveable and dateable and a snappy dresser and foxy to boot.  Who listen to the events of my recent past entirely without judgement and then congratulate me for my bravery.  Because they are those kind of people.  The kind of friends you can see twice a year and hop right back in where you left off.  The kind of friends who don't try to pressure me to move back home because they know that I can't.  True loves.

Tricky because I have to leave them all soon - my lovely friends, my moms, my sister.  Because as always when I have to leave, I will be momentarily but breathtakingly heartbroken, because here I am free and easy and confident and so very loved.

So today I remind myself of my true love friends in Edmonton and how much I miss them.  I remind myself that I am brave enough to take on this new life, whatever it will be; that I am just as clever and funny and foxy in my 'new' home.  That the kids and I will be just fine.  And even more so now, perhaps, with the remnants of groundedness and warm fuzzies and positive reinforcement I've gathered from being home.