Home

I haven't been back to my childhood home since December 2013, but I'm lucky to have a childhood home to go home to, and that I will be back in 7 short months. It's been such a long time since I've paralleled parked in front on my parent's house, my car shaded by the maple tree with the rope swing where I spent so much of my childhood on.

It's amazing to think that so much of my life I daydreamed of moving to the far away places in my books that my mother read to me before I went to sleep, and now, more than ever, I daydream of coming home.

I'm way past the halfway mark with my service in South Africa, and although I love the warm temperatures in the summers, the braais that last long into the night, and the way my students greet me in the mornings, I cannot wait to get back to Pittsburgh.

I daydream about eating boxes of Mrs. T's perogies (and yes, I have made them from scratch here in South Africa). 

I cannot wait until I can say something to a new person and they don't have to ask where my accent is from, and then going through the whole spiel of “Peace Corps, teaching, HIV prevention, Pittsburgh, Wilmington, Baton Rouge...” I look forward to walking my dog down Walnut Street, and seeing childhood friends along the way. I'm excited to eat at Pamela's, La Feria, Mad Mex, Buffalo Blues, and so many other places just walking distance from my house. I am so ready to be able to drive to a friend's house, or even to just the grocery store.

But most of all, more than anything, I cannot wait to arrive in Pittsburgh International Airport, and be transported back in time, to a place that has known me since I was a toddler. I can almost hear the chimes in the shuttle and woman's voice saying "To gates A, B, C, and D, please hold on." I cannot wait to see my parents greet me at the baggage claim, the same one we used when we would fly home from Scotland, and the one my sister and I used the first time we each flew back from university. 

I can picture walking out into the parking lot with my two oversized bags, and throwing them into the trunk of the car. I can picture driving home, through the Pittsburgh Tunnel Monster, and still being stunned on the other side of the mountain of just how beautiful Pittsburgh really is. 

I can feel the way the car bumps along the potholes as we drive down Fifth Avenue, making only a few short turns before parking outside of our house. My mother, always with the green thumb, would without a doubt have planted snapdragons, pansies, and an assortment of other flowers, and the smell of a Pittsburgh spring will fill my nose as I climb, two steps at a time, my front steps to my childhood home...

This is what I dream about now.