June 6, 2005 — Kelly and I have been back at our home in Colorado for a day and a half now. We’re caught up in unpacking, sorting through things, putting our three well-fed pets on a diet, and so on.

Despite all the chores, it feels great to be back and to begin catching up with our lives here.

But is this home? What has Mexico done to us?

On our way north, we stopped in Albuquerque at a huge shopping mall where we had a great time looking at some of the new camcorders and buying some books in English. In the midst of it all, Kelly said, “I’m homesick for Mexico.” I immediately knew why he said that just then. Where was the liveliness?

My father traveled world-wide a great deal all his life, and he would say sometimes that at any given moment he could be homesick for two or three other places.

I know the feeling!

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Two weeks later — Yesterday I got home.

It surprised me. We have been back from Mexico for a while now, and I didn’t know that I wasn’t quite here yet. But suddenly, walking across the living room with nothing special on my mind, I thought, “This is home,” and I felt it too.

It felt really good. It takes nothing away from my love of Mexico, of Bernal, of our house and cat there. It says little about what choices we will make in the future. It’s about now, about being here, about living in the present.

Home.