Home-less

I am currently sitting on my couch in my living room in our house in North Salt Lake. I am also in a rental house with a contract in Oro Valley until the end of November. I am under contract to purchase a different home in Oro Valley that potentially could be mine in less than a month. Three homes and yet I am home-less. The term homeless to me really means a person who doesn't have a physical home (like guys at a shelter) but I am using this term to define how I am feeling.

I discovered I had this feeling yesterday, the second day away from our rental house. Our second day in our house in North Salt Lake.

Back Track: We left Utah for Tucson at the end of August. We packed up our house for it to be used as a furnished vacation rental while we were gone. There were three piles: the stuff to take with us, the stuff to pack in storage because we didn't want to take it with us but didn't want anyone else using, and the stuff we kept out for other people to use/destroy/take. In preparation the house got cleaned and repaired. Mostly it got de-familyized. All the stuff that made it uniquely ours got taken out/down so it would be okay for lots of other people to move in. Now it's a nice house but less home-ish.

We moved into a furnished vacation rental home belonging to Jack and Lynn. Through online pics I found I liked their home but was concerned their house was too nice to move in with kids. Lynn and I then talked and we discussed how my kids only eat on hard floors and don't jump on couches and I felt it would be okay. We signed a four month lease. We now had freedom to decide if we wanted to live in Tucson and buy a home, or call it quits and go back to Utah. Week 1 in their home- great. We loved discovering all their animal decorations and thus our new 'pets'. Pool was great, we damaged 1 or 2 things. Zero interest in house hunting. Week 2- pool great, organizing going good. Week 3- not so much keeping with my toy organization, not so much pool. Damage done to something in garbage disposal. Starting to look at homes. Week 4- toy chaos, no pool time, damage mounting. Gave up doing house hunting alone and hire a realtor. Week 5- I am feeling way done with being in someone else's house with their stuff we are wrecking and not the right stuff I need (garlic press where are you?, no cheese grater either?). This rental house isn't home. Just a nice hotel with a place to put our stuff for a long while until we find a home.

House hunting in Tucson. Bryan wants a, b, c and I want d, e, f. Having different goals make it challenging to find a house. But if you look closely the letters do have some things in common, like a and e (they are round, short vowels). He wants biggish house, big land with a pool. I want smallish house, fruit trees, good neighborhood, We (read Bryan) starting looking casually in January. We hired realtors in March and did serious house hunting for a while. We drove out in June to see a place. Bryan went out in July to finalize and he walked away in the last stages. September we fired our realtors, went it alone and then hired someone else. The house we have under contract is a good house and a good house for us. We are not in love with it. House hunting is getting old, let's just find a house and move on with life. We were in love with our home in North Salt Lake from the moment we stepped foot inside of it. Is buying a house kind of like marriages- none as good as the first?

And yet I still held out that my Utah house was home. Six weeks away and we were coming back to see how we felt. For the first half of the first day it was home. The maids were cleaning the inside of it, so we first all ran around outside. "Hooray, the strawberries were growing! There's one that's ripe- Emily got it." Then to the backyard where we sat on rainy wet swings and slides and ran around the grass. We mourned no trampoline, checked out all the flowers. Then to the inside where we ran all around seeing and touching our house. The girls headed downstairs to check the toy room and then upstairs to check their beds. Aaron goes upstairs to find toys and was happy until he realized he is now far away from mom whereas in our rental he was always close by.

Kids get home from school and all the world is fun. Friends everywhere! "Can _____ play at my house? Yes!" Our friends, our family. Then I go inside to our freshly cleaned house and realize that we are very messy. Suitcases, dishes from lunch, drinks, shoes. It all has to be spotless again in a week's time. Don't get too comfy, we aren't living here anymore. And that's the home-less. Where is home? Definitely not the rental. Not our new home. Not our old home either.

But I think I found it today. The feeling of home. It started in church when all my friends were there. They hugged me and said welcome home. My community who cares about me and loves that we was there. It was good: noticing, saying hi, caring, love.

But the real home feeling came in my garage after church today. Em and Ash, Maddie, Jeni, Kole, Jonathan, David, Aaron, Nathan were all around. Making fairy stews and a fire pit, and playing monster high and babies and mom. In my garage around my card table and getting out at infenitum all the things they get out which I hate cleaning up all summer long. Croquet set, bikes, toys, buckets, rocks in piles, leaf/flower petal piles, leftover snack crumbs, folding chairs, etc. And I went out there to eat my lunch b/c I wanted to see Aaron. And there it was. Home. All those kids whom I love so much sharing, playing, talking and laughing. And it was home. I even shared my Vietnamese pork bowl (which Bryan bought for me the night before) with Kole. Even when David was hogging all the toys because he was mad b/c the kids weren't playing his game. Home. I felt understanding for their struggles because I knew them so well, happy they all had each other as friends, proud of where they'd come and how they'd grown, hopeful for their futures. Plus nice weather and yummy food were going on. Lovin' it.

Home is not a building, an address or a mortgage payment. Home is a feeling, a sense of comfort, belonging, acceptance.

So now what?