Coming home

I am doing NaBloPoMo this month. 30 blog posts in 30 days. You can read more about it on San’s blog the in between is mine. #nablopomo2022

The yellow house

Whenever I go up to the steps of our front door I feel happiness. For one: we have a red front door now (it was red before but it was more of a brownish red, now it is a red red) and red doors make me happy. Our house is yellow now and yellow houses always make me smile – yellow houses feel like sunshine.

I feel so fortunate that this yellow house is ours. I still remember how stressful the whole house buying process was. It’s crazy in the whole Bay Area, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Berkeley, you name it. When I stepped in the front door I just knew that this was it and it was perfect (at least to me). It was an off market sale and in our price range and everything fell into place. Sometimes you just have to be lucky. Before we moved in I chatted with the previous owners and the woman said she felt the same way – maybe that’s just how some houses are?

This yellow house is home now. I love the neighborhood that we walked for many hours during the pandemic. I can ask our neighbors to get the mail and water my garden when we are gone. Even when visiting my family in Germany now, I don’t mind leaving anymore because I am coming home to the yellow house.

There is this German word that I did not find a good translation for: Heimat. If you look it up it comes up as home country or home town or just plain home. But in German it means more than that. It’s a place of belonging, a place where you put down roots. It’s an emotion as much as a word to me. I am glad to say that now it finally feels like my Heimat is in both places.

When I came up with the blog title it was more or of a wishful thinking but now it feels real. I guess that also means I need to come up with a new subtitle since I think I know where I belong – it’s with family here and there, both places home.

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