Close to Home

There is an overwhelming feeling when I wake up each morning in my white little apartment. It happens in that split second when I roll over in bed and realize that I’m not at home. That the pillows smell a little different and the light is a little bit yellower when it comes through the window and my heart is a little bit further from the calm it usually holds when I first wake up.
It’s that overwhelming feeling I get when I realize that home is oceans away and I will get out of bed today and face head on a culture I don’t yet understand and accents I can’t always decipher and tasks that really don’t make much sense (buying my electricity and cell phone minutes at the grocery store was something that took a moment to register.)
But it is in that overwhelming moment when I am noticing the bars in my windows and the locks on my door when I hear laughter outside. And it’s that big overwhelming kind that shakes your whole body and makes other people laugh, too, just because the process itself looks fun. And you know what? That sound of laughter is close to home.
And there are other places where the familiarity can be felt. It was in the taxi driver, driving me home from the hotel after saying farewell to my mom and my aunt, looking at my tear stained cheeks and saying, “I understand that kind of missing and that kind of sad. Just pay me half.”
It was in the coffee skinned babies at the township we visited: holding up their arms and clicking their tongues, and the universe understands that they wanted held just like any baby from home.
It was the awe of every single person as they gazed at the sunset and moonrise at Lions Head Peak. That’s not a perception of beauty that changes with the hemisphere.
It’s the late night dancing and too strong coffee and unbridled hugs that remind me that I may be thousands of miles away from that place that I call my home, but I can see pieces of what I know in everything. It’s in those pieces that I know that everything is ok, and this is a good place to be.
Because as far as I can tell, smiles mean the same thing no matter where you are.