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THOUGHTS OUTSIDE THE OFFICE

This morning I did what I do every morning. I got everybody where they were supposed to go.

Two kids to the bus stop. My youngest to daycare. Backpacks, shoes, car doors, kisses, reminders, all the ordinary little pieces of getting children out into the world before I have even really started my own day.

Then I came back home.

I did not have anywhere I had to be immediately this morning, which almost never happens, so instead of getting dressed for work right away, I went back into my bedroom and laid down for a few minutes.

Nothing was wrong in that particular moment.

Nobody was calling me. Nobody needed anything. There was no emergency. No crisis. No catastrophe.

It was just quiet.

And somewhere in that quiet, one thought came over me so intensely that I felt it before I even really heard the words.

I just want to go home.

Then again.

I just want to go home.

And then came the strange, almost cruel realization.

I was home.

I was lying in my own bed, in my own bedroom, inside the house that I own.

There was nowhere else I was supposed to go.

What do you do when you are homesick for a place you are already standing in?

This house still does all the things a house is supposed to do. The roof keeps the rain off of us. The walls keep out the heat. There is food in the kitchen, hot water in the shower, beds to sleep in and lights that come on when I flip the switch.

It shelters us.

But shelter and home are not the same thing.

Somewhere along the way, this place became hollow.

The rooms are still here, but so much of the life that filled them is not.

There are places where noise used to be. Empty spaces where somebody’s things used to sit. Routines that disappeared without asking permission. Rooms that look almost exactly the same and somehow feel completely different.

Sometimes I walk through this house and it feels like walking through the set of a play after everyone has gone home. The furniture is still there. The scenery is intact. But the story that once happened inside it is over.

Sometimes a house survives a life that did not.

And maybe that is why my mind keeps saying, I want to go home.

Because I am not asking for an address.

I am asking for a feeling.

I want the place where my body finally stops bracing.

I want the sound of my children moving through the house. Shoes where they do not belong. Somebody yelling that they cannot find a charger. Half-finished drinks on the counter. Towels on the bathroom floor. Somebody wanting a snack immediately after refusing to finish dinner.

I want ordinary.

God, I miss ordinary.

I do not want some perfect house with perfect rooms and a perfectly arranged life.

I want somewhere that feels alive.

Somewhere my children and I can exhale.

Somewhere we can make new memories without every room reminding us of the old ones.

And I think I am finally beginning to understand that when I say, “I just want to go home,” I am not asking to go backward.

I am not asking for the old life back.

I am asking for a place that feels like ours again.

Maybe that will happen inside these same walls. Maybe enough new mornings and birthdays and dinners and messes and laughter can eventually fill the empty places back up.

Maybe home will be somewhere else entirely.

I do not know yet.

I just know that right now, there are mornings when I can be lying safely in my own bed and still feel homesick.

And that is heartbreaking.

But there is something hopeful buried inside it too.

Because if some part of me is still asking for home, then some part of me must still believe there is one waiting for us.

Maybe one day I will walk through a door, put my keys down, hear my babies somewhere in the house, and realize I am not searching for anything anymore.

I will just know.

We are home. Who knew that such a simple word could carry so much significance. One day we will be home.

Judith L. Hampton

Attorney-at-Law

Hampton Law Firm

Thoughts Outside the Office is where life, law, motherhood, work, and all the things that do not fit neatly into a legal file sometimes end up.

To read more from Hampton Law Firm, explore our articles, legal resources, and services at hamptonlawla.com.

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