A note from the author:
My travels began when I was still an infant, my first trip to Guatemala being at just six months old. The next 12 years of my life contained many summers spent abroad with my family in Romania, Moldova, India, France, and more. Those short months spent away from my hometown were a rather insignificant part of my life compared to the much more important friendships and hobbies cultivated during the remainder of the year—extensive make-believe games played at recess, creating new recipes in the kitchen and refusing to clean up after myself. Yet the memory of those brief but bold memories have managed to weave themselves into something much larger as time has plodded on.
I’ve now been to over 30 countries in my young life—some just for a few days, some that I’ve spent many months in. The more I explore, the more I realize I have only experienced a sliver of what the world has to offer. Yet the more of the world I see, the more the small moments I’ve created while traveling begin to root and hold a deeper fullness for me—a fullness where time isn’t a barrier to how deep a connection runs, and home is an idea that doesn’t have limitations as to how much it can hold. Having the opportunity to store meaning in so many places and so many people is a gift that teaches me more about home and where we find it every day.
Here’s to all the small moments where I find myself feeling at home and finding fullness, and where I hope you find it, too.
I stand,
hand above my eyes and looking up.
Breathe in,
breathe out.
Everything is connected under the sun.
Mountains,
forests,
and oceans change;
and yet the sky will never budge.
the sun is the sun is the sun.
home is home is home.
I leave and come back and leave again,
slicing up home like pieces of a pie:
peach, apple, and cherry.
Each bit of honeyed fruit dissolves on my tongue.
Peach, the syrupy sweetness of still silence cut by music pouring out of a warmly lit doorway; a
couple stumbles happily out into the cold winter night.
Apple, the buttery taste of the first “hi” from a new friend when you least expect it.
Cherry, the tang of the lonely moments spent watching TV in bed, not enough energy to peel your skin from the sheets.
I’ve gotten good at finding meaning in small moments like these.
Extracting the memories and connections from brief exchanges to find
home hidden underneath.
the sun is the sun is the sun.
home is home is home.
I stand,
hand above my eyes and looking up.
Breathe in,
breathe out.
Everything is connected under the sun.
Meaning begets meaning.
Fullness begets fullness.
Home begets home.
the sun is the sun is the sun.
home is home is home.
