Home

I knew something was missing, but could never quite place my finger on what it was. An uneasiness of some sort, always waiting for something.

The town was never home. We lived there, but when asked where I was from my childhood town passed my lips. We lived in the town for 8 years but had not grown roots. We tried. We joined groups, reached out to make friends, bought a house. But it all remained superficial. Something to do until...Until what, we didn't know.

I think choosing to live somewhere and ending up somewhere makes a big difference in how you view the town. Perhaps that's why it never felt like home. Why that uneasiness and sense of being in transition never left.

In the late fall of 2007 all the stars aligned and we were presented with an opportunity to move. So in February of 2008 we packed up, left the town and moved home. This little town, half the size of the one we left was immediately that.

Friends were made easily, we found a rhythm and the sense of uneasiness vanished. We unpacked. We stood still. And quickly our roots dug deep into the mud. I love our little town. The beauty of it never ceases to amaze me.

Now you can ask and I'll tell you, I'm from Windsor. I live in a little community outside town, where the population of horses exceeds that of people, called Greenhill. But we call it home.

Jammies

Yesterday I spent the day at home on the couch sick.  I prepared the coffee table with necessities so once snug I wouldn't have to move.  I had the phone, remote, glass of water, the usual.  Unfortunately I forgot that daytime television doesn't change depending on health.  Daytime television is worse than being sick.  But I was snug.  I didn't want to move.  So I flicked through the best of the worst and settled on Gene Simmons Family Jewels.  The guy is pretty funny and his kids are funny, so I was surprised.  It wasn't awful.  Glad I didn't move from my perfectly snug spot at any rate.  The best part of the show was when they showed him in the morning wearing cozy jammies with feet in them.  The kind I wore when I was 5.  The kind I wish I could still fit into.  With the zipper up the front and the rubber grips on the bottom of the feet.  I guess that's what having millions of dollars will buy you.  Fuzzy jammies with feet.  Sigh.

It reminds though of Owen wearing those jammies.  He had a few pair when he was small.  He only wore them until he was 2 or 3 though.  Unlike Reiley who wore a pair until he was 8 which he had really out grown when he was 6.  Some things are just hard to let go of. 

Anyway, Reiley and Owen would often linger in their jammies long into the morning and play together with the big duplo legos.  I don't pretend to understand the motivation behind what my boys do, or how they come up with their ideas but that one morning still leaves me scratching my head.  It wasn't until I was changing Owen's diaper that I noticed a huge blister on the inside of his knee.  I mean huge.  Red and chaffed  and painful.  I asked him what happened and he said he didn't know.  So I asked Reiley, he didn't know either.  Come to find out, they had been playing with the legos like usual and Owen had on his jammies with the feet in them like usual.  But that morning they decided it would be fun to see how many legos they could stuff into Owen's jammies and zip them up.   They stuffed so many legos into his jammies they were stuffed down his legs and when he walked, they rubbed a blister on the side of his leg.  To the boys I'm sure this was quite funny.  Seeing Owen double in size with squares sticking out everywhere.  After the blister I'm not so sure how funny Owen found it.

That was the end of that game and the end of the jammies with feet in them for Owen.  Not by my choice, by his.  I never understood how he couldn't just love those kind of jammies, but now that I think of it, maybe he has his reasons.