I wrote this piece nearly five years ago, in late summer 2016 just before my twentieth birthday. Some things have changed since then, some not—I’m no longer planning a wedding, but I still wonder how I’m old enough to be an adult (never mind that in a mere five zipping years I will be thirty). Anyway, I wanted to share this piece now because it’s comforting for me to see the growth I’ve experienced since then—most of which, like anything worthwhile, occurred gradually and unconsciously. I hope it inspires you to look back on yourself five years ago and feel proud of how far you’ve come.

I eat a peach plucked freshly from the tree just outside the living room. The flesh is tender as I bite into it and I lean over the sink while the juice runs down my chin. My favorite excerpt from Annie Dillard runs in a loop: “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” When I am in Colorado, I spend my days sleeping in, slowly doing yoga, reading, planning a wedding, driving down the winding roads to get coffee in the afternoon, spending tender evenings with my love as summer transitions to autumn. I keep thinking I should be doing more with my time and then the day is over. 

Some evenings when Jacob comes home from work I’m frustrated for reasons I cannot name. The other day was particularly dreary and he handed me the bottle of vitamin D capsules and said they would help. They did, or maybe it was a placebo effect, or maybe it was him, or maybe it was all three combined. What is it about love that makes us so damn greedy? Greedy not for another helping of food, or five more minutes of sleep in the morning, but greedy for something as simple as being in the same room as the object of your affections. I thought I was an introvert before I fell in love, and maybe I still am, but now instead of alone time I crave him. 

I am almost in my twenties. Sometimes it feels I have lived so much longer than that, and other times I wonder how I am possibly old enough to be meal planning and making my own dentist appointments, much less getting married. We all choose our paths in life, or maybe they are chosen for us, or maybe a little bit of both.

Two houses ago—our little mountain cabin in the aspens

On my morning walk I try to meditate but all I feel is a burning jealousy of people with balconies. Later, in lieu of magically procuring a yard, we bike to the park where the geese honk furiously at the swan-shaped paddle boats, their heads violently snapping from front to back. I brought a book to read but I lay on my stomach and watch the people walking past instead: a loudly laughing man who looks shockingly similar to Tobias Fünke; two little boys in matching sailboat-printed button-up shirts, the older one proudly spelling out his name: b-o-d-h-i; a smooth pair of rollerblading fiends. On the way back to our apartment I pedal slowly past the beautiful homes filled with beautiful people and wonder if my life would be more beautiful I lived there too. Probably not.

I care a lot

I’ve been obsessively thinking about homes: what makes a home a home? where can we thrive? what aspects are non-negotiable? what can be compromised on? My husband teases that my standards for living are abnormally high. I’ll grant him that—my barometer for living may be skewed. I extract an enormous amount of comfort from the space in which I live and work and won’t rest until things feel “right.” (Admittedly nothing makes me more fastidious than living in a furnished apartment while all our things are in storage—who, for instance, decided that a wooden Colorado state flag painted in garish colors is acceptable living room decor?) Even though our stint in this apartment is temporary, I couldn’t help myself—when we moved in I hauled with me plants, bought a new bathmat, swathed the bed in our own linens, and rearranged the guest room. This process has made me think: why do I care so much? Assembling a home takes an extraordinary amount of work, time, and money, and there will always be spaces far better than anything I could conceive (cough, Troye Sivan’s house, cough). Why even bother?

Perhaps there is an explanation to be found in the temples of Greek gods, a place where the gods’ "specific characters could be stabilised through art and architecture." Rather than leaving their deities floating in the ether, the Greeks felt strongly about creating tangible spaces that reflected the gods’ respective identities. These ancient peoples knew that humans crave a physical container for the soul, that “without architecture, we struggle to remember what we care about.” In a way, our homes in the modern era are temples too. To say that our homes are shrines to ourselves might be a bit presumptuous, but nowhere else in the world is there an area that reflects our individuality so uniquely and vividly. Our homes are a tangible manifestation of what we value. 

Optimum living

Certainly our homes also serve as a sanctuary from the outside world—we cannot survive without shelter. But beyond a roof over our heads, what is home if not “a space organized for optimum living while outside remains as unruly as ever”? There is comfort in a place that is customized specifically to me: mirrors hung at just the right height, the bed made just the way I like it, the kitchen optimized for the way that I cook. Is this the reason, perhaps, that I feel awkward and clumsy in a space furnished by someone else? For, of course, the accoutrements of this apartment have been tailored to someone who isn’t me. 

I’m not sure when I’ll be home again, or where I’ll l find it. We’re waiting for a house that has the “spark,” that thrum of sparkling energy and the sudden urge to bar any other prospective buyers from seeing the house. Walking into every new house is fraught with anticipation—could this be the one? Could this be the place we make our own and raise children and get another dog? One by one, each house has chided us for thinking it belonged to us. Just means it’s time to buckle down and be patient. I’d like to think there is a physical container for my soul somewhere out there.

We’re driving to the 45th parallel of latitude, the halfway mark between the equator and the north pole. As we cross into Montana on Highway 89 we’ve left behind the shelter of the mountains and it is brutally hot. “I thought it’s supposed to get cooler the further north we go!” someone says. But then we’re in Montana, mostly just so Dad can check it off his list, never mind that stepping across an arbitrary state line is different than actually spending time in a place. We stop for pictures and our phones ding with messages, back in the land of service. The boys slide down the embankment to the Gardner River and strip down, jump in the frothy water. The girls stand and watch, wish it were easier to join them. Then we’re back in Wyoming, climbing back up into the subtle mountains of Yellowstone, listening to Kacey Musgraves and breathing a sigh of relief as the temperatures drop. 

I’m not sure what I was expecting but it wasn’t this. Yellowstone is unimaginably big, to the point it doesn’t feel cohesive. Most of the park is forested; you drive through undulating trees from one clearing to another. What’s behind the pines is always a surprise. In some areas the park is pockmarked with steaming portals to the earth’s molten interior. Many of the geothermal features are grotesquely ugly, belching sulfurous mud and steam, but some of the pools are so benignly beautiful it’s hard to believe they’d kill you in a matter of seconds. In the southeast Yellowstone Lake appears huge and calm, an oasis from the cauldrons of the deep. In the northern section, towards Montana, the trees fall away to a barren high desert that surrounds the strange little town of Mammoth. 

Our days in the park fell into that beautiful camping rhythm: coffee and oatmeal in the biggest patch of sunlight you can find; getting dressed in the morning chill with agonizing slowness; piling in the car for that day’s sightseeing; eating way too many pb&js with a view; pulling back into camp with enough time for a beer before dinner; getting ready for bed while it’s still light out so you can go straight from campfire to sleeping bag when the dew descends. We all felt like this was our real life, couldn’t imagine living any other way. It was a shock to return home. That’s what’s so important about these trips, I think—when all the distractions and busyness are stripped away, you’re reminded of what makes you feel alive. Hold these truths close and let them guide your life—they are a gift.

On Sunday morning I sat in the hard wooden church pew of my childhood holding my godson, steeped in incense and nostalgia, a home like I’ve never before known. “I don’t know when I’ll be back next,” I told Callyn and her face fell. “I would’ve brought a gift if I’d known,” she said but the real gift is that she has borne witness to the last 13 years of my life.

And even when I’m no longer there please think of me staring out the window in that treehouse bedroom, or wandering the cracked pavement of those old familiar streets. Maybe it’s futile to mourn the loss of a home you haven’t lived in five years. But how do I explain that even the mountains are nothing compared to the evening sunlight filtering through those sycamore trees where I fell in love over and over again? It was cold and gray when I drove away.

In my new apartment the only table is a high-top, with wobbly backless barstools that discourage slouching of any sort. Maybe I’ll have perfect posture by the time I move out. During the day I bump around the place, continuously getting lost even though it is small, nothing yet familiar enough for muscle memory. The bathroom and kitchen are newly renovated but in a slap-dash way that looks better in pictures than in real life. I cling to my old routines but still it’s hard for me to think clearly. Outside it’s snowing again, big fat flakes that clump messily on the new grass, never mind that it’s late April. I’ve learned how to adapt to the cold here but it’s heat that I crave. Imagine living in a place where Spanish moss clings year-round, where the air is so thick with cicadas and humidity you could press it between your palms. It’s hard to imagine things will ever be the same again. I hope I’m wrong.