Two and a highchair

It's almost Sunday here, and for many of you, it already is. Ben will be up any minute now, sleep-crawling and smacking his lips. I'll keep this short and sweet. Us three, we had a very nice day (I trust you all did as well).

There was a perfect table for two and a highchair on a sun-drenched sidewalk outside Volunteer Park Cafe. There were purply tart pluots, and if you've never tasted one, you ought to. Soon. There was strolling strollering. There were cacti and chickens (not in the same place), and a tiny skateboard. There was a beach, there were swings. There was a simple dinner, its easy prep and cleanup making it all the more delicious. 

Whenever Chad has the weekend off, we go bananas packing it all in. Days like this, I go to sleep thinking I've turned a corner on feeling at home in Seattle. 

I adore what Luisa Weiss has to say about home: I am perpetually homesick, so I cook to anchor myself and find joy in the small things: a perfect apricot, the texture of sea urchin, the smell of bread baking in my kitchen. Don't you just love her? I cook to anchor myself. It should be a bumper sticker.

Chicago will always be capital H home and when I miss it, though it's an amalgam of nostalgia, the sharpest knot in my throat is from thinking of my family back there. But the boys, my boys, they too are home. Dear friends who have become kindred spirits, they are home as well. These various homes don't have to be mutually exclusive, do they? The bigger the family gathering, the more rambunctious, the better.

I can't say it any more eloquently than Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros as they call out: Home is wherever I'm with you. I realize most of you probably happened upon this song whenever it first came out, but let's face it, I'm not that hip. I just heard it for the first time this summer and to make up for lost time, I've got it on daily rotation.

Wherever you are this very minute, may you feel at home.