Back home

Gosh, I love my grandma's house. It's the one place from my childhood that is still ours and still the same, and there's just something so comforting about that. 

Our trip was full of simple magic and nostalgia. We stayed at grandma's house, ate cobbler made from fresh peaches, went to the zoo, spent quiet mornings on the porch, and Rory romped around with Ginger (the dog) and the new kitten as often as we'd let her. Ginger passed away and went home a few weeks after we left: I like to think she went home to be with grandpa when his year anniversary of being called home came. Rory still talks about Ginger often, and I still think of all that's different these days.. and hold tight to all that remains the same. 

Grandma still gardens, she still loves books and read to Rory every night, she still makes the best tortellini soup and sourdough pancakes on the planet. She still sends me home with homemade jams and cinnamon raisin bread, and she still has impeccable taste. On that note, I think every time I'm there I find a new piece of timeless furniture I love and haven't noticed before. 

We went home because i needed my people. And I needed them to know my baby. We moved when Rory was just three weeks old and with everything happening in my own family, we haven't come back for more than a few days for funerals in over a year. So these people who came to my graduations and made me dinner more times than I can count and were in the temple on my wedding day didn't know this tiny person who made me a mom. And I just couldn't live with that for another year; so I went home. 

Because I went home, I will always chuckle thinking of Rory jumping off the couch onto Uncle Ty's lap yelling "Uncle Pie!", and I will always remember bathing my baby in the claw footed tub where grandma used to bathe me, and I will remember Rory asking for weeks and weeks after (ok, she's still asking) if we could "go to California mommy". I will remember how sweetly she asked if she could help grandma put flowers on grandpa's grave in my favorite sweet little cemetery, and how much she obsessed over her cousins (especially baby Ruth: pronounced Roof). There's just something about being home that grounds me and reminds me what I actually want and who I want to be. So for today we will keep chugging along from far away grateful that there's always holidays and eternities where we get to be with all our people. If you have a chance-- (even if that chance involves 13 hours of driving by yourself with a toddler) go home.