Home

For the first 20 years of my life “home” was our house in East Texas. Then I moved to Colorado and slowly but surely the transition happened and “home” became Durango. What about now though?

I have been in Guatemala for about a month and a half now and my definition of home has been turned on its poor little head. Over the past 3 weeks I have come to realize and accept three relatively different definitions for the word.

A definition that just kinda misses the mark

1: A space of one’s own: This is what I longed for when I left Antigua for the apartment in San Raymundo. I remember walking in the door and seeing the living room, and the corner that we will call a kitchen, and the dining room and the bedrooms and bathroom, and the whole thing was going to be mine! Of course over the course of the next two weeks I realized that having a space of one’s own might be a little overrated if one is always there, always alone and never experiences the outside world. I want to clarify that I’m not whining about it, I’m just being a little critical of my own definition of home.

A slightly more accurate definition

2: A familiar and friendly place to lie one’s head: This is what I longed for as I checked out of the hotel yesterday with all of my bags and the warning signs of a cold. Augusta helped me lug my luggage the 6 blocks to my host family’s house. I cannot even begin to express how thankful I am that this is the same host family I had before. If you have ever tried to function in a foreign country with a cold, you might be able to comprehend how out of sorts I was. My nose was running, I was starting to get a fever, I was homesick (for nothing in particular, just had that feeling of missing something) and until Elizabeth opened the door I was bedless and had a very bleak outlook on the world. No worries though, it all turned golden when that door opened and I got a big ole’ mom hug and was led straight to my room where I promptly dropped my things on the floor and myself on the bed and called it quits for the next 18 hours. (Ok, so I went to get lunch with Augusta and David…but after that I called it quits). As I lay in bed wrapped in jackets and blankets listening to you-tube videos on my phone (because I couldn’t keep my eyes open) I couldn’t help but smile a little to know that however many thousands of miles away from my previous homes I was, I could still find a place to be welcome.

The definition that I think hits the mark

3: A place one dreams about every other night one is gone: I think my second definition is useful and accurate most of the time. We can be happy in a lot of places if we just have a welcoming spot (welcoming implying that one actually leaves said spot unlike in the first definition) to lay our heads and call “home base” for a time (however short). This third definition though gets to the heart of the issue. Home is that place you have left your heart. I dream about Durango almost every night. If the dream isn’t centered around it, it takes place there. Every now and then I dream about my Parents’ house in East Texas too, because in a lot of ways every version of myself between birth and 20 still lives there.

In conclusion (because everybody likes conclusions)

 I still can’t believe I am on this adventure. I know myself, and sometimes I am confused as to how exactly I got myself into this. This is something my hero would be doing, not me. I would be back in Durango, working and envying this person…but here I am. Every day I just have to remind myself, yes Sara, you are doing this, and this is just the beginning. Imagine what the rest of your life has to hold.  Every morning when I wake up though, I remember that one day (who knows when) I will go back. And maybe my love will have changed, and undoubtedly I will have changed, but no matter what, Durango will be home to every version of me that happened between 20 and 24…and that version is the one that is on this crazy adventure.

So here’s to places of one’s own and places to lay one’s head and places to dream about all the while one’s gone.