Monday, March 28, 2011

Home

Our flight from Honolulu arrived too late to connect to Hobart, so we stayed at Shirley's Home (and Bar)  for Weary Travelers before flying home Thursday afternoon.

Sydney was classic Sydney - not a cloud in the sky, temperatures above normal in the high 80s, and the harbor deep blue with thousands of sparkling lights. When we arrived in Hobart, it was in the mid-60s and rain was pelting down under black clouds that looked like staying for a while. And that's when both of us realized it. We were home.

Having Caroline Weather hardly mattered. What counted was that this was where we belong now. It's not that we're "over" Sydney, just that it doesn't feel like OUR place any more. Sure, we care a lot about the friends and family there, but the city itself is just another place (albeit a beautiful one) that we were passing through.

Once inside our house, LK turned absolutely bubbly. "Oh, Donald, it feels so good to be home," she said. I am pretty sure a stranger overhearing her would have assumed that, rather than spending a week in Hawaii, she must have been in prison for a few years or trapped in some disaster zone.

But I knew what she meant and how she felt. I was glad to be home, too.

The weekend did a classic Hobart flipflop and became spectacular. Yesterday we awoke to bright sun glistening on the water and temperatures warm enough to drive with the windows open. We drove into the farmers market to stock up on  veggies and then stopped in Kingston at the homewares store to make a return of a duplicate item and exchange it for a food mill.

Of course, having the two of us go into a homewares store that is having a sale is a virtual guarantee that we will inch ever closer to the limit on our Visa.  The little le Creuset casserole dishes and the chef's pan were on sale and we probably did not absolutely positively have to have them. But the prices had been cut significantly. As I paid for them I realized we would be better off not making returns but just donating the items to charity.

And in the interest of  full disclosure, I was probably more in shopping mode than LK. I even started thinking about how much money I was saving by buying the sale items, rather than how much I was spending.  I really have lived with her a long time.

But no matter. We want these for the house, and this house is a home now. And we are loving it. By the way, at one point yesterday afternoon, LK looked on the computer and noted that Hobart and Sydney both had the same temperature. We were fine and sunny; Sydney was raining.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad you two are home. This blog really put a smile on my face!!!

Anonymous said...

Me too! The contentment really shone through! W & J