Homecoming

“Here we are.”

The car engine hummed another moment before shuddering into silence. I was not looking forward to opening the car door and be enveloped once more in the Virginia winter cold. Not that I disliked the chill, but having just gotten off a plane from California, I was still adjusting.

Through the darkness, I looked up at the brick building in front of me, the mess of windows. Some of those belonged to our place. Our place, I repeated to myself incredulously.

I next found myself ascending a concrete stairway, dragging my heavy luggage behind me. Allis had an armful of parcels herself, which she had brought in the car from Lovettsville on the way to pick me up. She was saying something about how much I was going to love it, but for some reason my mind kept going back to the shock it endured when I’d read down the street a sign at the local nursery: “Poinsettias and Christmas Trees!” It was that time of year already.

We were absolutely drenched.

If Allis could ever look like a wet cat, she was showing it right now. We hadn’t exactly prepared for rain – much less the torrential downpour that ensued following her company’s reception at a ritzy gallery in downtown D.C. As we surveyed one another on the Metro ride, we couldn’t help but laugh. It couldn’t be helped now at any rate. I’d forgotten how gross it was to wear fully soaked jeans. I smiled inside. Ah yes, it’d been a year since we’d become roommates again… and we were older, but right now I questioned whether we were wiser.

At the Metro station, we only had to tarry a moment before a familiar car appeared at the curb. Sarah let us in and we piled in. The first strains of a Christmas tune floated to my ears from the radio. Ah yes. The inimitable Glen Hollis. We were on our way home.

The door opened, and I stepped across the short entryway into a very large, vacant room. A half-dozen boxes were piled on one another near the left wall, and that was the only sign of life I could distinguish. I turned to face the kitchen and took a look around: bare cupboards, new refrigerator and range, and the sink had a funny smell to it. But it was a nice kitchen.

“Do you like it?”

I felt myself nodding. “Oh, yes.” It was no lie, but I was still so in shock that this was going to be my home that I didn’t really know how else to respond. The lease was signed, so this was home for the next year regardless.

Something swelled in me at that moment though, a love for this place because it was a clean slate. These walls had yet to hear either my laughter or my tears. I could start over, right here, right now.

It happened every other week at least, but here we were doing it again.

Sarah and I barged through the open door with six grocery bags on each arm (“We WILL do this in one trip…”). She’s chiding me about minding the eggs, and I remind her that the one time I fell while carrying the eggs, not a single one of them broke. Meanwhile, a disturbed Allis looks up from her reading.

Not for the first time, she makes the startled observation, “What is all that?”

“Food,” I say dryly.

Sarah sings, “Food, food, glorious food…”

“Wow,” Allis replies with a distant air that sort of speaks, I eat that much in the span of three months, what do you need with all that?

We don’t care, and simply set to the task of putting everything in its place. Today the kitchen smells faintly of cloves and cinnamon, probably from the pomanders I’ve been working on and the oatmeal cookies that were recently baked. The funky kitchen smell is long gone.

I wander upstairs in the darkness, still dragging my suitcase. I presently think to myself that I will someday know exactly how many stairs there are in this place. I go to the room that I know is mine – I’d been studying the floor plan over my Thanksgiving vacation – and grope for the light.

Inside were more boxes, but the room was mostly big and empty. I looked at the carpeted floor despondently; this would be bed tonight. I needed to go mattress shopping or my back and I were going to have irreconcilable differences.

But something told me I was too tired to care. Ultimately, when I cleaned up and curled up the corner opposite the big rectangular window, my exhaustion overruled my discomfort this night.

My hand reached for the banister as I walked upstairs, but almost before I felt the sensation of wood, I remembered that earlier in the evening, I had wrapped the berry garland up the railing. I smiled as I surveyed the pretty holiday addition to the house.

Upstairs, the new mulberry candles are burning. It’s the first time I’ve had to replace the pillar candles in my room since I lived in Lovettsville. I like the scent, and the maroon wax is a proper, seasonal color.

Eventually I melt into bed and pull my quilt up to my chin, keeping out the cool night. It finally feels like winter, and I’m glad. We can’t very well have Christmas decorations up in Virginia when it’s sixty or seventy degrees outside.

I look over at the nearby window, where I see the light from the electric candle dance slowly between the lace curtains. I love those candles. They seem to emanate comfort, and for me, they are part of what has defined this home for me in the last year.

I close my eyes, and with that passiveness that comes with familiarity and comfort, I drift into rest, and then to sleep.

...In honor of the one-year anniversary of the move into the Alexandria townhouse. Allis and Sarah, I’m calling Glenn Hollis tonight to request “Christmas Eve in Washington” and you can’t stop me :-P