We're about to take a leap into the unknown, a new start down a well-worn path. In so many ways, 'going home' feels scarier and more intimidating than moving to Zurich did in the first place. We both feel we've changed in such a myriad of ways as individuals, as a couple, and now, as a family. Our apartment, although rented, feels like a place we have owned forever. I love entering through this main door, chatting in passing with a neighbor, maneuvering past the excessive number of strollers stored in our foyer, and feel, before I even reach the door to our actual apartment, that we are home. The sounds of our upstairs neighbor, Medea, playing the guitar at night through the floorboards, the cars and trucks as they roll by outside our kitchen window, the slam of the front door are a soundtrack to our otherwise quiet lives.
This city, this country, they have infected us. The things we value, the simplicity of eating healthfully and only in season food, of walking straight up the hill above our house and in no time at all, entering a tract of forest so vast, I'm sure there are areas we've never explored. The feeling of inexplicable joy when holding a small, soft hand in your own and walking down the street to the Coop pronto, stopping along the way to close the gate to every house (what was once a five minute errand stretches into thirty), and once we enter the shop, Liam always running right over to the milk, and whether we actually need it or not, picking it up and carrying it directly over to the counter where he expects everyone to stop, and take the coin he's been clutching this whole time. Our afternoons at the zoo, just thinking about them leaves me feeling absolutely gutted. The slant of the fall sun, Liam's gorgeous little run as we rush from one animal to the next, and then, pushing the stroller all the way home through the crunch of dead leaves while Liam gestures excitedly as we pass diggers, cranes, dogs, buses and cars.
The friends we have made these past five years, people who became our surrogate family. I don't think Joe or I ever could have imagined how much these friends would open us up, would take our narrow, slivered world view and tear at the seams. In the past year, I have 'picked other moms up' (i.e. got their telephone number) on a tram, in the park, at a toddler class, etc. It always used to make me laugh to hear our friend Erin talk about how she made friends with a lady on the train one time, and now I find I am the same. Please, do not allow this to change...
We don't know what the future holds for us, can't yet fathom what small daily activities we will treasure in our new / (old) home. But, we do know that we have taken a truly incredible, loving family and set of friends, and grown it. We have three places to call home now. Three incredible, vastly different, perfectly flawed places. We are resigned to the fact that no one place will ever capture the essence of all we hold dear anymore. But, we know we will be together (soon enough), and a hell of a lot closer to our families who have supported and loved us unconditionally all these years. We could not ask for more.
'Wherever the road takes us, whatever our journey brings, open your arms and I am home.'
- Leigh
