Yesterday, we had to stop the car to let a bush turkey cross the road.

Things like this are part and parcel of our life in Australia; oddities that are no longer oddities; the day-to-day around here. All the elements of our life here–the birds that sound like small children crying, the spider webs stretching across street blocks, the seagull poo dotting the sidewalks–my brain has moved them from Strange to Normal territory; my ears block them out, my hands automatically brush them away, my steps avoid them.

What once used to be my bedtime soundtrack–the horns and sirens and noise of New York City–had to, a couple of weeks ago, be blocked out by earplugs after my valiant, sleepless effort to prove I hadn’t changed that much. Then came the manicured and predictable paths of suburbia, with even the hidden corners feeling polished: my walk with The Niece down hills and over creeks with rocks arranged just so (naturally, we had to move them, via splashy-tossed rearrangements).

I didn’t know how much I missed–no, need–the bigger water until I returned to it. Now it glimmers outside my window, and one thought, above the stretching of love across the world, wins out: it’s good to be home.

It’s good to be back to the bridge that raises and lowers outside our window every day, The Kid alerting me to its activity. It’s good to be back to the smell of salt in the air. It’s good to be back to two bodies pressed against mine on the couch. It’s good to be back to dropping temperatures and shorter days.

It’s not quite as good to be back to TK running into the bathroom, asking what kind of poo I’m doing: “Is it diarrhoea?” To the privacy of solo plane rides shattered by Little Brother yelling from the next room: “Hey James, let’s go put our penises on something!” To “HEY!” yelled in my general direction when a need remains unmet for longer than three seconds.

“Why are you so angry?” The Husband asked the other night after a simple question was met with a guttural sigh and frenzied tone from me. I was jet-lagged, sure, but it was more. It was culture shock: my solo self clattering back into my decidedly accompanied self. “Reentry is…hard,” I answered.

And yet it often seems to be what my life is made of: reentry into the South after five years in New York. Reentry into America after years of Australia. Reentry into New York after a year away from its streets. Reentry into Atlanta and family and friendships after months of long-distance. Reentry into reality after holiday. The landings are often delayed, and rarely perfectly smooth. There are adjustments that need to be made, laundry to be done, Game of Thrones episodes to be caught up on.

But there are also reports: of Little Brother regaling his friends and teachers with song reprises–“Sunflower” and “Shotgun” are current favourites. Stay tuned, You Tube. There is TK’s assessment that term two is “going so great so far!” There are familiar faces and terrain. In the midst of reentry and what feels like a growing unpredictability about life the older we get (waiting on our local package, wondering if we should plan for American or Australian high schools, not exactly having a clear idea of where we’ll be past a year or so down the road…) there is…home. Right now.

“Is it the future?” TK asked me on the way to school this morning, and any sense I have of time grows skewed with age (see above, and also a recent viewing of Avengers: Endgame). “It’s the present,” I told him. “What’s the present?” he asked, and I thought for a minute. “Now is the present,” I said. “So…it’s always the present?”

He looked like me after the Endgame credits rolled. As in, “I have…questions.”

The Husband and I, two consummate planners, are living one foot in front of the other (much like my hike from a couple months ago, but with less visible blistering). Manna and mystery are our diet, along with lots of carbs. I long for the order of a bullet-pointed list, the assurance of a set-in-stone calendar…even as I’m pulled, and even brought to strange new life by, waves of unpredictability and seasons of change.

There’s that classical music station I love, the notes falling in a textbook rhythm most hours, but in the middle of the day they change tunes. And it sounds like what is happening with us, this life we’re called to that defies expectations and what we planned for it, the neurotypical and the not-so-typical, the manicured lawns and the bush turkeys, and a grace that seems to be making jazz out of my life: rhythm giving way to wandering, notes lingering into the future that becomes the present, the blue of the sea and the sky sometimes indistinguishable, with the biggest surprise being…that I like it.