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the piano is not firewood yet/

and nothing can stop you from dancing.

[regina spektor]

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When I go home, when I walk through those rooms and neighborhoods, the first day stuns me. It feels so sacred and strange that I almost can't stand it, to see the scattered pieces of the things I love most drawn together in one place. My physical chemistry is composed of this Old Town canoe with the baling bucket tied to the end, the damp smell of clay that hangs around my mother's pottery wheel, the low drone of cicadas rising and falling against the heat of the afternoon.

I walk through the neighborhood at night, past all the silent leaning houses and gleaming windows, the trees moving slightly in the wind, and I think about things that I only think about when I'm here. I can't believe how wonderful it is that I can come back, that I can walk again into this river. I think it was Mother Teresa who said that the best gift you can give your children is a home they want to return to, and in this my parents blessed me so richly I can't even form it into words.

It's when I come home that I remember my joy is bound up in the smell of cool bricks and brewing coffee, the round smooth kiss of stucco under my fingertips. I remember the sunflowers undulating in bright waves at the farm, the exact pressure of my grandmother's fingers, the cheerful banter of my parents. I see all these pieces of myself that I forgot about, that I wasn't brave enough to wear in another new place, and I get to pick them back up and pack them along with two dozen extra Rosa's tortillas for the road back. It's such a sweet mystery, one I absolutely cannot understand.