It's Thursday night on a beautiful sunny summer evening in Amsterdam. My neighbors are outside barbecuing and I can hear them from my bedroom window. I'm listening to Django Reinhardt and trying on dresses. I just got my hair cut. I'm making peace with my life - trying to obey my horoscope and see the beauty everywhere. Enjoying the sun on my face as I cycle home. Ignoring the scar from my fall in Colombia on my knee as I try on neglected sandals and high heels from DC. When I open my email to find a note from my sister in South Carolina. She's got old letters and my mother's old diary which I gave her after I found it in my mother's bedside table. My sister scanned in a letter that she found that I wrote to my mother when I was so young offering to start doing the cooking and washing around the house if I could start washing my own hair.
Suddenly all the ridiculous self imposed stress from work and the petty dramas which make up my every day life seem so small and far away. And I miss my family. I miss those who knew me when I was 8 years old and thought cooking with my mother was the coolest thing in the world. Hanging out with my dad when he walked down the street to pick up the Sunday papers. Riding bikes with my sister around the neighborhood and putting the cat into ridiculous costumes.
Sometimes I love my life - so "glamorous" living in Amsterdam, hanging out with fabulous and beautiful women, drinking wine in the park, and traveling to dangerous lands to try to help people. But right now I would trade it all just to come home again to 2 Warren Court, Sumter South Carolina and eat my dad's potato salad and catch up on the gossip of the court with him and just be home. Home Home Home. Where I often felt 14 years old and ridiculous but always loved and accepted.
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