Feels Like Home to Me

The kids came home from college Monday. Not all three, the oldest is in the Washington, D.C.area, working until his post-grad program at Georgetown University begins in August. Having successfully completed their junior years at UC Berkeley and Pacific, the other two are home. It's a new place to all of us. Since I'm the "homemaker" in the family, just equate my emotions with the classic mom's in the usual scenario. I missed them so much, I could squeeze the life out of them. 

In March, we moved to our new place south of Salinas in Monterey County. It was a coming home of sorts. We lived a few miles north of Salinas for thirteen years before the four years in Bakersfield. Part of this move was a timely decision to down-size. We lost a couple of bedrooms, the gourmet kitchen, a family room, a pool, and downsized the garage and yard. Our lives are different, but there are some touch points. Would it ever be a "home" that our boys would want to come home to?

This is home now, the view from our deck in Indian Springs Ranch this morning.

It's a pretty setting, but it has only housed the two of us (my wife and I) since we moved in two months ago. We hadn't even had an overnight guest yet. Now sharing the same space with two 21 year-old boys (men?) would be an adjustment, but that's to be expected. They're only around for a week or ten days until they take off for summer internships in San Francisco and Connecticut. Precious little time. 

When I was a freshman at college, my mother sold the only home I'd ever lived in after Christmas. Coming home for Easter and then summer was unsettling, if not a complete shock. Though she'd only moved five miles, the place never felt like home to me. My former home in a familiar neighborhood was exchanged for a one bedroom apartment with a pull-out sofa for me. I scraped up two jobs for the summer, using leg power, public transportation and my bike to pull it off. I depended on my old friends to come collect me at the apartment if I wanted a social life (and you can bet I wanted-and found-a social life!). 

Now my boys have it quite different. There are bedrooms for each of them, a car at their disposal, and exciting summer plans that mean little time with us old folks in the new place in a new town. On Monday, the nervous homemaker wondered, did I make it a nice home for them? When they arrived, the belated birthday dinner was ready, the parents anxious, the boys running late. They loved the house, settle in quickly, appreciated it all. The transition was fairly seamless. On their first day here, they already met an old friend for lunch in Monterey, spent a lazy afternoon with their toes buried in the sand of Carmel Beach, their minds decidedly on vacation.

This morning I've already noted the piles of dirty laundry, the messy counter top, the shower doors that didn't get squeegeed. My oldest boy called from D.C. to discuss finances. The reality of raising kids and the routine of a full house slapped me in the face before the clock even struck eight a.m. It feels like home at last.

I took a peek at the schedule on the kitchen calendar. The first child leaves home Sunday, the second soon thereafter. The countdown to an empty nest has begun already. Sunday, please don't come so soon.