Comfort

I've begun an adventure to live 3000 miles away from my lifelong home, accompanied by my 13-year old son.  My husband remains in Alaska with my family on a multi-generational homestead where I grew up, while our son and I explore living in Northern California near his family.  I've traveled south to seek sun, heat, and new opportunities. Along the way, I'm sharing my journey about pursuing dreams, discovering what matters most in life, and finding the strength to be brave in the face of uncertainty.  For me, healing and strength are often found in simple pleasures and frequent communion with nature, so join me as I embark into the outdoors to reveal what's inside of me.

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Comfort

(the feeling of home)

"Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam, and the deer and the antelope play.  Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day." - Dr. Brewster M. Higley

I went home for Thanksgiving.



I was stand-offish at first, but it couldn't last for long.  Nowhere will ever be home like Alaska.  When I'm home I slip into a way of life I don't have to think about.  Alaska and I are like old dance partners who know all the other's moves.  We fit into each other's grooves and fall into step without much effort.  It's much the same with the people I left behind in Alaska, we embrace each other and take up our old routines without trying.  The feeling of home envelopes me in a comfortable warmth like crawling into a familiar bed. There's even a special kind of satisfaction from the familiar interactions of home. Something eases in my chest when I return, lets go of anxiety, and settles into the reliable assumptions about the places and people I've known best and longest.

I felt myself being drawn toward home weeks before I boarded the airplane, like my heart was leaning that direction so hard I thought I would fall over.  It hurt.  I wondered if it meant that I wasn't supposed to be in California. I heard my home calling to me, beckoning balefully, but my emotions became more muddled the closer I got to answering the call.  I was afraid that when I got there, I wouldn't want to leave.  That's why I was stand-offish at first.  I knew I wasn't done with my quest in California and needed to get back to it, but I also knew the allure of comfort was a powerful thing.  Comfort is a feeling that lulls me into complacency and instills fear toward losing it. In general circumstances, comfort is a lovely thing, but I had learned to become comfortable with things at home that weren't good for me. I had come to realize that many of the comfortable habits I would slip back into weren't serving my soul, my inner joy. I had become comfortable with holding back, sacrificing my pleasures, and believing that more wasn't possible.  I was starting to learn so much about myself during my time away from home that I didn't want to lose my fragile insight, my new perspective, my tenuous hold on inner desires. So, I tried to view my visit in a different way: as a visitor.  I tried to stay in observation mode, to tell myself that I could be the kind of person who returns to her childhood home on occasion to reunite with family and friends, but I didn't have to stay.  They make movies about people who do that sort of thing!  Lots of movies.  I could be one of them.

At first, I felt like an impostor, a black sheep, rather than a prodigal child returned to the snow from whence I came.  But, I waded back into the flow of the lives I left six months ago and was swiftly caught up in the old ways. I laid back in the current and tried not to think about where it would carry me. I reveled in simple joys like snuggling my kitties, warming my back by the wood fire, cooking in my large kitchen with the expansive views outside, and having lunch dates with my dearest loved ones.  These were good comforts that I noted to myself as necessities in an ideal life.  I was grateful for the beauty of a light snow on our first morning, for the orange glow of the fire and the lemon yellow of the walls, for the easy physical closeness of my family, and for the seemingly vast indoor space of the house (compared to the 350 square feet of our California living quarters).  I dually noted that room to stretch my legs and large windows to look out on the world from within the warmth of my home was an essential ingredient to my feelings of joy, and something I missed desperately in our tiny California rental.

As I encountered people during my visit, I had to put away my former pride about loyalty to my home state and learn to tell my story about a new relationship with a warmer, sunnier place.  It was sometimes awkward, like telling the friends of your ex about your new beau.  It made me reflect on my choices and my choice of words.  But I maintained my convictions and did not regret for one second the decision I made to leave Alaska...so long as I could say that it was still temporary.  I was still no closer to knowing where this adventure was leading me, which made me feel untethered and apart from the kind of real lives everyone else was leading.  Their lives sounded concrete and dependable, while mine felt like it was dangling and drifting further away from anything solid.  I felt like the bit of lint at the end of a thread that's come unraveled from a sweater.  My state was precarious and ever-shifting, barely connected to anything, and vulnerable to being cut-off completely.

During my time at home, a sense of homelessness began to grow. It became clear that I had neither a home I could truly call my own in Alaska, nor California.  I felt uprooted and in danger of my roots withering if I didn't find soil to plant myself in soon.  I felt the pressure to choose a soil and at least say that I would end up there soon.  I felt like a traitor, a refugee, from any home I'd ever known and I yearned for the grounded feelings of place and belonging I'd had before.  On the other hand, I was nervous about admitting that I liked the freedom and unpredictability of the place I lived in now.  California was the land of opportunity and surprises for me...each day presented an adventure toward an unpredictable future.  That uncertainty and openness suited me, too.
























Being home in Alaska was exactly the paradox I thought it would be.  I felt at once peaceful and restless; comfort and discomfort; satisfaction and longing.  The two halves of myself were facing each other in the mirror and squaring off.  I decided to allow the Alaska self, the one that found comfort and reward in conformity, to overrule the wilder adventurous self that was visiting from down south.  I decided to lay back into my familiar mould and just sink down in the warm cushion of familiarity for the sake of peace and comfort.  Oh how easily it is done!

Comfort came in the automation of my few days back in the familiar realm of home.  I could drive to town on auto-pilot, find groceries at the store without thinking, relish the provision of heat and light without concern about finances, and fall into familiar routines and physical intimacies without self-consciousness.  There was so little thinking necessary to functioning at home.  Unlike the exhausting rally I had to muster each day I spend on my own in my new sunny surroundings down south.  These were all luxuries I'd learned to live without while away in California.  By the end of my short week at home, despite my initial trepidation, I had sunk deeply into the old ways.  I was a spoon in a jar of honey, slowly submerged, coated, and now impossible to extricate without a sticky mess and a good deal of waiting.

The shock of returning home, and leaving again, hit me the night before I left Alaska.  I didn't sleep.  I rose with butterflies, churning questions that needed answers, and panic over not having enough time.  I felt like there were things that needed to be talked about, but never were.  I felt the urge to make some kind of decision, but I didn't know what it ought to be about. I worried over the future. I lost my feelings of comfort as I faced a plane ride back to the ever-changing battle lines of my life expedition.  I was headed back to the front lines and wasn't sure I was ready.  I didn't know where I was headed and where home was supposed to be anymore.  I hugged my family goodbye, again, and pulled myself away from the solid warmth of their bodies against mine.  My husband said, "We'll figure this out."  And I knew that he meant, "You have to figure this out for yourself."  The tears began to roll down my cheeks.  They didn't dry out until I was somewhere over Oregon.

I recognized that I didn't have answers yet, but I accepted that the kind of answers I was looking for weren't going to be found in the comfort of my family home.  I allowed myself to feel the pain of separation and uncertainty, to let it seep down into my open wounds, to run hot down my face.  I let it out and wasn't ashamed. It helped that my son was right there with a hand on my arm, comforting, loving, quietly hopeful that when I emerged from my longing sorrow we would continue on our adventure.  And so we are.