Home is where?

Almost four weeks I have been “home.” The use of quotation marks is warranted by the fact that the quest for home still continues, still being examined, still being defined, because home is not a static, geographic place.

In the most general sense, this is home: the place where my husband and I mostly live (when one or both of us isn’t away), where most of our mail arrives (sometimes it goes to our PO Box on L Street), where we have most of our stuff (some of it resides in storage on H street), where we cook familiar food, and know the exact position of the shower knob which determines the perfect water temperature for our bodies, where our closets smell like us. It is where we know the noises on the street, and feel comfortable going anywhere. Where we feel comfortable. This is home.

In recent days I’ve been waiting to hear from potential employers about job interviews I’ve had. I am hoping to hear from a school with an offer of a teaching position. While I wait, I feel anxious. I check e-mail, phone way too often, the way one does in an obsessive relationship. I keep waiting. Various mental deadlines I hopefully established, have passed with no words. Tom is still in Pakistan and I miss his physical presence helping me to feel grounded and normalized. The anxiety has pulled me out of myself, and therefore out of feeling comfortable. And even though I sit right in it, in these obsessive moments, home feels distant.