A Visit Home to Connecticut

My mom thinks that I don't think of her home in Connecticut as my home because I didn't grow up there, and in fact, I've never really lived there, outside of a couple of weeks of college vacation. I don't think of Wallingford as my hometown but I do feel like I am at home when I am at my mom's. She's wrong because I think she confuses the idea of a hometown with truly being at home. It's home because I sleep well there and because I wake up to coffee made for me. It's home because my old toys and books are there, carted lovingly over the years from home to home. But of course, most importantly, my mom's house is Wallingford is home because my mom is there.

My mom and I have routines when I visit, which I think are part of her routine when she's alone, too. We scope out yard sales and consignment shops for bargains; we head to Macy's but skip the rest of the mall. We make coffee and sit outside and look at her garden. We walk around her neighborhood to look for what houses are for sale or we walk the trail at a nearby park. We drive to Wesleyan to check out the changes since I graduated. We visit my grandmother for more coffee. It's routine, possibly bordering on ritual or tradition, and I look forward to each one because my normal routine in Minnesota is hectic and filled with people and kids and work and noise and meetings.

As I get older, I find myself building my own rituals that mirror my mother's. After I found my mom watching Sunday Morning on CBS at the unheard of hour at 8:00 am, I got hooked. I started waking up a little earlier every Sunday and watching it as I read my newspaper and drank coffee. I've tried to carve out more summer time vacation at my own house, planting flowers and tomatoes and enjoying just being home. I scope out the yard sales here, wake up early almost every day to have a little time to myself before the day slips away, and, most obviously, make coffee with milk (not nearly as much as my mom and my sister) every chance I can get.