There's this thing that happens every time I walk off of a plane and into the Nashville airport. It is this immediate deflating. It's always hard for vacation to end, but when vacation is a month long journey around the Western U.S. visiting many of my favorite people it is especially hard. I spent a month laughing, talking, catching up, drinking wine, playing board games, doing science experiments, reading books, giggling under the Christmas tree, holiday dinners, nights out with my siblings, twirling and playing princesses with my niece, sledding, drinking pots and pots of coffee with my sister, nursing sick children, staying up 'til 3 with my brother, shooting guns (it's Montana, what do you expect?), eating way too much at my grandparent's, sleeping in, watching movies, soaking in the breathtaking beauty of Montana, and just loving and being loved. It was such a fantastic month.
And then comes the return. Que the music...dun, dun, dun. Suffice it to say, it's always a rough transition. I mean, how do you go from weeks of this face:
accompanied by "Aunt Wachow, you pay wif me, pease, pease, pease!?!" everyday to a series of professional relationships that are consistently less than professional or even at all pleasant. It's a rough transition. It always makes me homesick. It's a funny thing that I am most homesick every time I return "home." I recognized fully once again that home really is not in any way a place to me. Home is where the people I love are. I have lots of homes. I just don't happen to be living in one of them at this current moment. But I have great hope that I will be again soon, and I have so many options. Every stop I made on this trip I said at one point in time or another, "I could totally move here." (Ok, maybe not Stanley. I love the farm and my grandparents, but I'm probably not moving there any time soon.)
My brother introduced me to The Head and the Heart last fall and I finally downloaded their album and have been listening to it pretty much constantly the last week. This song in particular has been played over and over and I want to share it with you all. Whether I saw you on this lastest epic adventure of mine or I'm saving you until next time, "I miss your face like hell" and hope there aren't too many rivers and roads before I see you again.
