It’s June, and I’m sitting in our family room with the fire blazing, a hot tea beside me, and Charlie Brown Christmas music playing from the speakers. Kevin the Dog snoozes in front of the fire, balls intact for now but to be removed on Friday.
Somehow, life is as it should be. Not as I planned it, mind you–but as it should be.
The Husband got me a new phone, which arrived yesterday, much to The Kid and Little Brother’s delight, and they already know how to work it better than I do (my camera roll is full of TK’s artistic renderings of his self-constructed parking structures–apparently I now have access to something called stage lights within my camera). I was nearly stranded at Aldi this morning when I attempted to pay with my phone for the first time only to find that they don’t take the Amex card I have stored there. One frantic phone call to TH and some tinkering later, and I left the store a bit embarrassed (it’s okay; my phone’s facial recognition can see past shame) but with wine in hand.
This morning, we (I, then TH as I tapped my foot impatiently nearby) couldn’t get my headphones to pair with this new device so I used my old phone, which had no internet access and could only play the music currently downloaded to it. Therefore I listened mainly to the Teen Titans soundtrack for my run, which I credit for my quicker-than-usual time.
In all this, somehow, life is as it should be.
I ventured into a new-to-me part of the city on Monday and sat across from a man who checked my documents then sent me to another room, where I answered twenty questions about Australia–a country that, as of a few years ago, I’d never even visited, let alone planned on moving to–and got them all right (because they were easy). TH did the same thing an hour later, and now we’re waiting for the ceremony that will cement us as citizens of this country we somehow landed in, despite other plans.
As it should be.
After a pandemic-related year-hiatus, the boys’ school had their annual Fireworks Night last weekend, and we bounced around from the silent disco to the carnival rides to the food stalls before settling on blankets among friends. We took cheeky sips of wine from metal water bottles, ate Domino’s pizza, held babies, and groaned–but couldn’t stop watching–when one of the kids’ classmates lost his battle with sugar-related motion sickness and barfed all over the turf. Then we turned and watched something better: intentional explosions in the sky that rendered us all silent except for Ooohs and Aaahs (and TK’s complaining about the decibel level).
Then we went home–from one home, that is, to another. Which is something we seem to be doing a lot of lately.
I’ve found home in places I never expected, because of all I never planned. This home resides in the in-between, in the spaces between where I was and what I’d never known, this greyscale yet vividly-coloured territory of all I’d been vaguely aware of now coming to life: unchallenged and reconstructed faith, foreign and familiar countries, mental illness and health, privileged and marginalised communities, conservatism and progressivism. I can inhabit this space now because the in-between is, somehow, my home.
Somehow, as it should be.