Full heart, empty arms #5

Home
 
Another week passes by and brings with it more spaces for reflection in the moments between the endless tasks I try to accomplish around the house, at work, in my clinical placements and for my Master’s degree. At times, I feel a renewed energy to be able to count down the days until Jack arrives home. The idea of his return becomes less of a vague date in time for me, and more about making happy plans for our upcoming reunion. I realized that although I have done a fair amount of traveling in my life, that home has become more of a mood than a place in the past few years. Don’t get me wrong, there are always the associations of home with certain places and the comfort of nesting in our little bungalow this winter has helped many lonely moments pass by more smoothly. Still, when I think of home I think of the people that fill the spaces, the moments that are shared and the memories that become anthromorphized upon the objects within those spaces.
 
I can’t help but look around the house and see reminders of the happiness we’ve worked to create within our home. Having moved many times since I first left home at 19 during my co-op placements at the University of Waterloo (12 moves in four years…) and beyond, I realize that I now have that certainty of home here I haven’t had since I was growing up living in Milton. While I get lost trying to find any new places that are slightly outside of my home grid or nearby driving region as I like to call it, I know that when I escape the bad Edmonton drivers and traffic there will be the comforts of home waiting to soothe the worries from my mind. I know my cat will rush to the door to greet me, that the soft leather couch will wrap me in a cushiony hug and that my desk will call to me, encouraging me to finish that last assignment or to read just one more article. But, these things are just things. They do not really have any intrinsic comforting abilities, they can not make me laugh; they do not tease in jest nor dream aloud with me. As much as I feel at home here, I know that my real home lies wherever Jack and I can be together. It is not tied so much to the objects in my space as it is the place where anything is possible and a great number of adventures lie in our future. It is a place where we make the meaning, not the things that surround us.
 
I’m not able to plan around this home the way some people might be able to. Our vacation planner at work requires our vacation requests for up until March 2010- a time frame of the next twelve months that for us could mean many number of things. Maybe we will be able to take that trip to Europe we’ve both been excited about, maybe we can plan to have a great wedding celebration, maybe we can enjoy some time in the great outdoors of the Canadian Rockies, maybe we can cruise the flatlands of Alberta in the new motorcycle Jack dreams of owning. At the same time of having these dreams, I have such less certainty than most people about how they will play out in terms of timing. I can’t plan for our adventures or our hobbies or our dreams with more than just vague timelines of ‘this spring’ or ‘this summer’ or ‘next fall’. But, I have a luxury as a military girlfriend & fiancé that few people may realize. Our dreams, our plans in life are just that: ideas that we hope may come to pass, but for which we have no guarantees for their eventual fruition. With the constraints of travel required on (at times) a moment’s notice for Jack’s job, I have the choice to embrace the need to truly live in the moment, to jump in the car and head out into the world whenever we are able to arrange for time off together at the same time and in the same country. I have the freedom to let go of the need for planning ahead, because I’ve learned that plans set in stone in the military are always going to change anyways, much to the chagrin of my type A mindset in that regard. Taking advantage of this opportunity in the past has meant that I have been able to do things like take off for the mountains in the middle of exams to become engaged days before my fiancé left for war. Likewise, although I do not know when exactly Jack will return, I do know I am able to wake up and live for today every day. With a moment’s notice on a sunny spring morning someday soon I wait for the best news of all- that he is coming home today, that the day I’ve been waiting for during the long, cold winter months has finally come to pass, that I too, can finally come home.
 
 FGirl