Do You Ever Feel Like: I Just Want To Go Home

Do You Ever Feel Like: I Just Want To Go Home!

7/10, Last day of Trip #4

Dorothy said famously: There’s No Place Like Home

Funny enough, even though we are moving to Oklahoma, California is still home. Our house is nearly empty. Everything that is personal to us is packed up in a box or tub ready to turn another space into our home. All colors on our walls were painted over to make a fresh pallet for someone we don’t even know. Our bed sits alone in the bedroom, with assorted clothes tucked neatly under the bed, hidden from view to give the illusion of space. Two rooms sit vacant next to a long hallway devoid of family pictures where echoes of our children’s feet pitter-patter in our ears but no one else can hear them.

A house for sale, an empty vessel ready to embrace new occupants and give them memories and security. We wait for strangers to come and view our home to see if it will fit their

dreams for the future.

BUT, it hasn’t sold. And with what it is, it is still our home.

Waking up in Needles, California, at 5:00 AM and it's 94 degrees Fahrenheit. We set the room’s air conditioner to 76 degrees at night, but it struggled to keep the temperature steady as it turned on and off. This hotel is not our home. Our home is north of Sacramento.

Across the parking lot is a separate building where the hotel presents their guests with a hardy breakfast. For 10 days we have been eating hotel breakfast. It isn’t what we would make at our home. We hit the road by 6:50 am.

Driving through the desert, it is hot. We will drive through a range between 88-102 degrees. Our only goal was to make it home, which isn't in a desert, so we drove. We just drove.

Making it to Tehachapi, California brings us a sense of relief as we rise up into the mountains to escape the increasing temperature of the desert floor. Picking up some bread, meats and chips at a local supermarket, we ate lunch in our truck. Not a lunch that I would have made if we were at home. We kept driving.

Hopped across the valley and headed up Interstate 5. More direct and less cities to go through. We may even arrive a few minutes earlier, then driving on Highway 99. We want to get home.

We arrived safely at home about 7:30PM. We need to go to the airport tomorrow to pick up our car, because today, we just wanted to go home.

A short reflection on what home means. It doesn't matter where it is located, it is always home where you want to be.