First impressions on returning home
We make a life for ourselves by carving out a piece of this vast world and rendering it familiar – the house, the car, the dogs, the cat, mother, neighbors, bed, towel and then we go away and experience the strange, while all the time seeing the familiar in our new setting – see it in another dog’s wagging tail, a shopkeeper’s friendliness, and routines around eating, drinking, and having coffee.
Right now the memories are all jumbled having left Zagreb in a firestorm of hedonistic rituals of food and drink – my body took a much deserved rest from take off till morning – sleep is all that I have managed.
There is a melancholy in the air – sad news about a friend’s child on return, the shock of seeing my mother aged, seeing Arlene aged — a mysterious heaviness inside that I either don’t want to claim or don’t know how to name despite an overwhelming relief on being home – possibly nothing more than jet lag working its way through my body.