Thinking of Home; Eastend, Saskatchawan

I think the art of Taking For Granted is a means by which we feel at home. When doe-eyed Rusty arrives at the frontier (in the Genesis chapter of Wallace Stegner's Wolf Willow), his innocent idealism and yearning to be something other than what he is robs him of finding a home. He is trying too hard, and that doesn't work anywhere. It reminds me of the first feelings of being in love--the exhilaration of first kisses, everything feels new: you remember that you are still potential, that life can be whimsy, sunsets are for watching and the city that you have known your whole life is a new playground of adventure. But it isn't until you learn to be able to graciously take that person for granted and practice that as an art instead of a right, that you get to feel happily at home with someone else. And in the meantime, all the knowing on-lookers just find you annoying and naive as they roll their eyes in your oblivious direction.

He wanted to see everything, miss nothing, forget nothing.
It wasn't until I was annoyed at folding laundry that I felt at home in a foreign land, that I had made it in Dublin. Before that moment, I had geekily glorified in ogling the varied (minimal in comparison to the States) boxes of detergent at the grocer. 'How COOL, that one uses 'brilliant' as a marketing line, this one looks like it was made in the 70s!' The first few loads of laundry had me humming with the quaint sounds of the dryer, or admiring how cute it was the the dryer was so low-performing. I really appreciated that I had to hang some clothes to dry because it made me feel so REAL. It wasn't until I was bored by the monotony of folding a shirt knowing that I was just going to dirty it again later, that the realness of the place actually set in. My capacity to not be enamored, to be bored by the parts of life that are, actually, boring, was the truth that welcomed me home. Really.