Home

I just got home from...well...home. There's one place in the world where I have felt truly and completely at home and it's odd since I really only lived there for one year before going off to college.

When my mom and step-dad got married and decided she'd move into to city rather than him moving out to the country I was pretty upset to be leaving the comfort zone of my childhood. That happened when I was 12 years old, but my step-dad's house was only one bedroom so we had to rent a house while his was demolished and a new one built that was big enough for the whole family.

He really wanted it to be a dream house, not just for himself but for us as well. He designed most of it himself and we all helped with the demolition and construction. He put in a dark room where he taught me to develop my own pictures. He and my mother and I helped salvage a lot of the hardwood floors in his old house for use in the new house. He taught me about wiring and he and I helped string the wiring in the new house together. I picked out the carpet (burgundy to go with the forest green I picked out for my bedroom wall color). I picked out everything from the tile, to the fixtures, to the shower curtain for, what I still think of as, my bathroom.

After all the design, and demolition, and construction, we finally moved into our dream house just days before I started my senior year in high school. I lived there for one year and then came back for two summers during college before moving to my own apartment. Even though I only lived there for a short time, it was home to me in a way no other house I'd lived in had been. I've lived in my current apartment for almost five years, much longer than I lived anywhere else (besides my childhood home), but it's still just my apartment while my mom's house is still my home. Tonight, sitting in the window seat in my favorite room in the house (the library), I wondered if I will ever think of anywhere else as home.

Elusive talent

Did you ever feel like there was something you should be doing, but you could quite put your finger on what it was? Lately I feel that way all the time. I guess it's a more pervasive thing, like there's something I should be doing in general, with my life, and I don't know what it is.

There's been one thing in life that I felt like I was really good at, that came naturally to me. I went to college with every intention to major in it but it didn't feel right and I'm a person who generally follows those instincts. That college that I went to, sure they had a really good program in what I wanted to study but I went there because when I first came to visit the campus I felt like that was where I should be and that was enough for me.

I know I'm being unconscionably vague here, and I'm not sure why. As open as I am about most things, as I actually pride myself on being, I don't tell very many people what it is that I consider my one talent. It's not like it's embarrassing, I mean if it's something you can major in at university it couldn't be, but it's just personal, something I keep close. Also, it's not like I don't talk about it at all. If you know me for long you could easily put it together. I think I've even mentioned it here once. I just don't often tell people that it's the one thing I've felt I was really good at.

There are other things that I can do relatively well. I'm good at arguing, giving advise, buying the perfect gift, cooking. I'd like to think I'm okay at writing. It's just that all of those things require a lot of effort...well...maybe not buying perfect gifts, but that's not really skill. In general though, the other things I'm good at all require a great deal of effort for me. I feel like there is something else out there that I should be doing, that will come naturally to me, be easy, and I'll be good at it. Or maybe it shouldn't be easy, maybe I should be doing something that doesn't come naturally. Maybe it should be hard. I don't know.

Reserve Duty

My brother and I haven't always gotten along as well as we do now. In fact, when we were kids we hated each other. More accurately, I worshiped him in that extra annoying way that only little sisters can, and he hated me in that awful way that only big brothers can. I used to ask him when our mother would be home and he would say, "never, she's dead".

The age difference didn't help. He's 4 1/2 years older than me which helped me pick things up earlier than some kids (like reading, and algebra), but it didn't help us develop that tight sibling relationship that some brothers and sisters have.

Whatever the reasons though, we did eventually start getting along when he was 18 and I was 14. We'd grown up in the country and the previous year had moved in to the big city which he loved and I hated. He took the opportunity to take me under his wing and teach me the things that he loved about the city. Public Transportation. Live Music. 24 hour diners. He told me how easy it would be to sneak out of our house (which he was dead wrong about because my step-dad was a really light sleeper).

Then, one day, shortly after I started high school, he took me out to the movies. I thought we were bonding, but he was really just trying to soften me up to tell me that he'd joined the army. I was so angry. Just when we were starting to get along he was leaving. I'd barely scratched the surface of the brotherly advice I needed to get through high school. I didn't have any other siblings, and I'll admit that my first reaction was disbelief that he could leave me alone like that.

That was early in 1993 and he left for basic training in the spring that year. It wasn't war time then, but serving in the military isn't the safest job even during peace time. I missed him. I worried about him a lot. I felt bad for him that he had to spend his twenty first birthday in the field doing training exercises, sleeping on the ground, probably in the rain.

My brother was only in for four years so he came home in the spring of my freshman year in college. What you need to know though, if you don't already, is that there's an eight year minimum for the army (in the US), which means even if you only sign up for four years, you're on reserve for four more after that. My brothers duty officially began in March 1993 which means his reserve duty ended in March 2001.

I don't usually think much about the fact that my brother just barely missed getting called up. Maybe I'm thinking about my brother now because his birthday is coming up, and maybe it's just the general nostalgia that seems to have taken hold of me lately. I can't tell you though how thankful I am that my brother missed getting called up and sent to Afghanistan by just a few months. I know other people who are currently serving in various branches of the armed services, and I care about them a lot, and worry about them too, but I still can't stop myself from thinking, occasionally, thank God it's not my brother.

Baseball and...chocolate chip cookies?

There are things that I used to love to do. When I was a kid, and until a few years ago, there were things that I did and I loved them. It's not that these things stopped appealing to me, or became painful reminders of something I'd lost, or anything like that. It's just that these were things I used to do with people, for people, and lately no one has asked me to.

When I was a small child my dad used to take me to baseball games sometimes, often for my birthday. I have a difficult time really getting into it on television, but I love going to games. My senior year in high school, the Mariners (my home town team) made it to the playoffs and I got the chance to take my dad to one of the playoff games.

I was working for Ticketmaster at the time, which you'd think would give me a discount on tickets but it didn't. Ticketmaster was very careful not to give the impression that they gave any kind of preference to their employees, and promoters of events didn't allow them to discount tickets for employees. So, they held back some tickets to every event, for employees, but they were never the best seats, good seats but not the best, and you still had to pay full price for them. If you wanted the best seats you had to call in or wait in line like everyone else.

I had to work the day the playoff tickets went on sale so I got employee tickets, 200 level in the old King dome on the first base line. I was so excited to take my dad to that game. My dad didn't just take me to ball games when I was a kid, he was the one that was always there for me. I'm not always the best at telling people how I feel about them, I'm better at gestures, and gifts. So, taking my dad to that game was my way of telling him how much he meant to me. The Mariners even won that game (though they lost most of the rest of those playoff games). It was one of those perfect nights you get sometimes in life.

Another thing I used to love was cooking. In truth I thought I didn't actually like cooking that much, I just enjoyed the reaction I got when I cooked for people. The first, and for a long time only, thing I could cook was chocolate chip cookies. I've got a much larger culinary repertoire now but the cookies are still a specialty of mine and they're indicative of why I don't cook much anymore unless I have people to cook for. I made a batch of cookies last weekend and realized for the first time in a long time that one batch of cookies is three dozen. What am I supposed to do with three dozen cookies? Eat them all and gain 400lbs?

I made them anyway though because I only recently remembered that there are these things that I used to love to do that I haven't done in years. I've been to a couple baseball games this summer also and I'm starting to realize that I've let some things slip out of my life because the person I used to do them with (or for) isn't in my life anymore. Part of the reason that I was so happy about being on my own (i.e. single) is because it was giving me the opportunity to (or actually forcing me to) finally decide who I really am. I know that sounds remarkably like the cliche "finding myself" but you should be used to my love of cliches by now, if you're a regular reader (and if you're not you should become one). It kind of defeats that ideal, though, if I refrain from doing things I love. I like the things I like and there are actually a lot of people in the world who like cookies, especially free, home baked cookies. I haven't seemed to have any trouble finding people to go to concerts with either. Also, it turns out that there are lots of people who like baseball and I even know some of them already, some of them are even friends of mine, members of my family even.