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We have now been home two weeks and we get asked quite a bit “how does it feel to be home?”. I haven’t quite found the best response yet because there are so many different feelings I have about being home. It is lovely to see all our amazing family and friends and to catch up with them. It is easy and pleasant to be home in our great country, especially during summer holidays. It is great to have things like a car to get around in, hot showers, flush toilets, real sized appliances, fully stocked grocery stores, and air conditioning. But then again it is not because although these things make life easier, we really haven’t needed them while we were away. Moving back into our house, which we love was nice and the kids enjoyed being reunited with their rooms and of course all their toys and stuff that they haven’t seen in 6 months. I on the other hand am not enjoying this as much. We have never been horders by any means, but living in North America we have still accumulated quite a lot of “stuff”. Unpacking all that stuff that we had lived without was really overwhelming. I struggle to keep things organized and with so much “stuff” in our house, it is a constant stress for me to try to keep things tidy. While going through boxes and boxes of clothes, I wanted to give it all away because why do we need it all? We are getting rid of a lot of things and our whole basement is filled with boxes and bins designated for our imminent garage sale.
Being home, my emotions can go from one feeling to the next in a matter of minutes. I have to come to realize that I am grieving our life that we had the last 6 months. Paul went back to work the day after we got home (we needed funds ASAP!) and we miss him. The kids are always asking when Dad is going to be home because they are just not used to him being away for 9 hours/day. I miss the co-parenting that we shared while on the boat and find watching the kids all day every day exhausting. I miss being outside all the time and I miss being active (while the car in the driveway is mighty convenient, it doesn’t lend itself to keeping us active). I miss our simple life; our slow pace of life on the boat. I also know how lucky I am to have the summer off with the kids and that come September, we will have to work really hard not to let get life get too complicated.
In their own way, I think the kids are going through the same range of emotions. While they are really excited to be back in our house, see all their friends and family and enjoy many things we missed while we are away. I think they are also realizing that life went on while they were away and they miss our adventures together. We celebrated Miles’ 4th birthday shortly after coming home and it was wonderful to celebrate with our family and friends.
We try to be open minded about our return and to appreciate it. But in the back of our heads (and in our hearts), we are still floating on that boat watching the sunset.
We are still working on a few videos from the last part of our trip which we hope to post soon. But other then that this blog will be taking a bit of a hiatus while we settle back into our life at home.
