A place called home
7 March 2008 
I’m sitting on the couch, drinking wine, socializing and catching up as visitors do — in my parents’ house.
At some point in time, that’s what I began calling my home.
The house has known for awhile. My room has smelled of floral air freshener for the last three years and has accumulated various odds and ends — a sewing machine, my sister’s Irish dance costume, a cello bow.
Freshman year, I drove back for meals and a cozy sense of home, tired of pseudo-homemade dinners and crowded dorm quarters. Then I brought back laundry and looked forward to family time and my own bed. Now I come home on holidays, borrowing clothes when I forget to pack pajamas and sweatshirts.
My mom still tells me, “Can’t you stand up straighter? You’re slouching,” and asks with concern, “Are you sure you can drive in the snow?” but it’s more like the advice of a loving aunt — something I have to hear but not necessarily heed.
My new home is the place I return to after long days at work, where I have piles of dishes waiting for me and a purring cat on my lap when I read. A year from now I’ll have a different new home; I don’t know where it will be, but I know I’ll have to make my own.
And though I won’t be going home to caring, questioning parents or an ever-loving cat, a home is more than a building or even a particular person. All I need is a place I feel comfortable in, a place to call my own.
A single tear
31 January 2008 
I don’t usually cry when I’m sad. I cry in rage, in frustration, in stress, but not in sorrow.
I dislike funerals, mostly for that reason. Everyone else cries, and I feel like I should join in and attempt to muffle sobs that I don’t have. Instead I end up standing alone in my silent grief, hoping that people don’t notice my lack of visible emotion.
I expected the same today, especially since my grandfather’s death wasn’t particularly unexpected or painful. And then my dad walked up to the podium. He and I are very much alike, we’re quiet readers, we’re observers, and we rely more on reason than emotion in most matters. And although he didn’t cry when he reflected on the times he had with his father and how he reacted to his death, his story did prompt a single tear to form in the corner of my eye. It slid halfway down my face before it dried, leaving only a thin line of salt.
He said he didn’t expect much sorrow, because he knew it was his dad’s time to pass on and begin his life beyond this world. It was logical and it made sense to him.
“I was there with him when he took his last breath, I felt his pulse slow to a stop, and I was relieved,” he said, “because his pain and suffering in this world was over.”
Yet the next morning, he felt a spring of emotion flow up from within and he began crying uncontrollably, not being able to pinpoint why, he explained.
Later he realized that it wasn’t sorrow or anger that caused his unexpected swell of feeling, it was a realization of the bond he had with his father, something that he could not feel keenly enough until after his father had left this life. Now, he said, he welcomes the tears when they come because he knows it’s a sign of the love he and his father shared.
Something about his story touched me in a way that no hymn, memory or photograph ever could. I cried at the funeral, but I don’t think it was sorrow that brought on the emotion. If my dad’s fountain of grief realized the love he had built up in his 47 years, my single tear realized a glimpse of the bond I share with him.
