Home, sweet, stir-crazy home. As Dorothy said, “There’s no place like home.” Home is ahead of us, behind us, and where we lie our heads down. Home is being able to get up in the middle of the night and find your way to the sink or the bathroom without lights. It’s where muscle memory avoids the creaky step. 

Home is comfort, family, love, familiarity, and also the place we’ve been mostly confined to for 13 weeks due to pandemic stay-at-home orders. 

Home, Sweet, Stir-Crazy Home

The other day, I caught myself saying “Stuck at home,” in a conversation, and while that’s true about how I feel stir-crazy and all, I also acknowledge how lucky I am to be here during these strange apocalypse-feeling days. How many people are stuck in containment facilities at the border right now? How many live in isolated care facilities, in hospitals, or on the streets? 

While I know that others having it worse than I do doesn’t negate my feelings, it’s important to acknowledge the situations of others. To see the blessings during the messy unknown. 

Home is what it is to each of us, and the feeling of being stuck or being secure and familiar probably varies from day to day, and sometimes, minute to minute. 

Here, for me currently, home is typing on your laptop and your 10-year-old making a happy face out of Cheerios next to you.

It’s taking him and his cousin to the tiny nearby reservoir to float on a raft, and almost losing the raft while putting it back on the car because the wind picked up. It’s finding your favorite fruit chilling in the refrigerator, and not worrying about the broken ice dispenser.

It’s your family pet, waiting for you on the stairs next to the spot of bald carpet she chewed up when she was a puppy. 

Home is what we ache for when away, what we can’t wait to escape as teenagers, and what we long to re-create for our own children. It’s what they’ll recreate for theirs, too. Hopefully? The stir-crazy pandemic “STAY THERE” thing will be over by then. 

Black Lives Matter

Home is finding out that our kids know more than we think they do. I found this masterpiece on top of the small plates in the kitchen cabinet.

He said he was pranking us, but also, we know he’s not.

He’s had enough YouTube or just heard us talking… TO KNOW.

Honestly, I hoped this wasn’t going to be the way he found out about things in the world like a Black man asking for help. I’m not sure what he understands, but also?

Holy *all profanities here* people.

The fact that my 10-year-old is thinking about people not being able to breathe??? Important and powerful, and also I didn’t get it at first. I do now though, I hope. And it’s F#CK#NG heartbreaking that he knows this. 

His other “pranks” were tape on microwave numbers, and the remote. Taping a coin the the counter saying “FREE MONEY” and then this… I asked him about it and he apologized.

“For what?” I said.

“I don’t know,” he replied, and cried.

I’m not sure what he saw, and whether it was helpful or hurtful, but it’s important. The time to change the world is NOW.

Use This Time to Educate Yourself on White Privilege. Please.

Home is also where each and every one of us NEED TO DO THE WORK to understand how we, as white people, DO. HAVE. WHITE. PRIVILEGE. Maybe you don’t feel privileged, and most of us don’t because we’ve each struggled, right? But that’s the thing. If you’re white, you have privilege, and PLEASE Google what that means.

It’s up to us white people to stop racism.

Now’s the time. It’s past time, of course, but now, it feels like real change might possibly be on the horizon. Use your time at home for good. I know being “stuck at home” sucks, but also, it doesn’t. Raise your awareness. Please? I’m trying to, too. I’m not all woke or whatever. I have a lot to learn. I know I want to though, and that’s a start. 

Here’s to each of us feeling safe wherever we’re calling home tonight and always. 

XO,

Kristi 

This has been a Finish the Sentence Friday post, with the prompt of “Welcome to my house (anything about your home)…” Write about a DIY project, your house, your home, how you feel about home now versus before the pandemic… anything you want.