"Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons." 

— Donald Miller (Through Painted Deserts)

I love the holidays. Absolutely everything about this time of year is glorious for me.  I love the way the air smells, the Christmas lights, the excuse for baking multitudes of treats.  I love the way people forget and forgive and put bad feelings aside.  I love waking up in a warm house with my brothers and me under the same roof, the fire in the hearth, and coffee after Christmas dinner.  And there’s just something unexplainable about the anticipation of knowing that millions of people are in celebration with you for one night. 

The holidays didn’t always feel this way. The past few years in a newly divorced family were tough ones, and it’s definitely taken time to find a new way to appreciate these days.  This is the first year that my brothers, my mom and I are all living in different places in the country, so it makes all of us coming home together seem that much more important and meaningful.

While home has been a hard place for me, I think what Don Miller says about leaving home to appreciate it is so unbelievably true.  Being away in Florida has helped me find the good in California, and I’m so happy to be in a place where I enjoy going home to a cozy house in Riverside.  My heart just needs it.  It needs to be reminded of where I come from.  It needs the morning fog and horizons of mountains.  Late night drives on the 91 through a sea of Peter Pan lights.  Friends who know 24 years of me, not just one or two.  God-moms and old teachers.  Sliding glass doors to patios with swings and bonfires.  Early morning puppy breath.  Movies in the cemetery and the ferry at Balboa Island.  Pumpkin spice lattes with my best friend and trespassing pools in the unbearable heat.  The sound of cars passing by and the continual promise of traffic at all hours. 

For 24 years, California has given me heaven and hell, but it finally feels like a home when I am there.  28 days and counting until I breathe in your smoggy air again and sit on your freeways for hours.  And I can’t wait.