It’s as if the leaves on the towering yellow maple just outside the kitchen window fell in one unified and agreed-upon drop, finally unable to hang above the dried grass a moment longer. Every blade was covered in ombreic shades of gold and maize and pale butter, the sharp-edged leaves flattened down by a steady rain that started falling an hour after we pulled up the driveway in the first new and dark minutes of Saturday morning. However it happened, it looked soft and bed-like and almost inviting.

Filling a tall glass with water, I stood at the sink shortly after 7:30am with a ten-plus hour road trip hangover (you know what I mean—still slightly dehydrated, knee and elbow joints stiff from the bucket seat sitting position, regretting the Taco Bell dinner choice at 9:30pm), having spent five of those hours inching our way through Chicago’s Friday night gridlock. The yellow of the leaves soothed my travel-weary spirit, and I lingered a bit longer than necessary over the dishes Patrick must have used for his post-trip before-bed snack. By my reckoning, he could eat whatever he wanted at any time of day or night from this day forward, after such patient obedience to the GPS that guided us along Lakeshore Drive, an alternate route to avoid an accident on 94. It added two hours to what was normally a seven-hour trip (not counting bathroom breaks and Taco Bell stops). Much as we both enjoy our time in the Big Blue truck feeling the miles disappear beneath its tires, this thirty-hour round-trip jaunt to the Windy City was brutal. As I write this, I’m not even sure I want to make the 18-mile commute to work tomorrow morning.

But there there…we’re home now, and it’s taken us the better part of two days to find our stillness groove again. Coming home to a clean kitchen was intentional and arranged. I knew I’d want my eyes to rest on an empty sink and a full dish drainer as soon as we walked through the front door. The view of the yellow maple carpet outside the kitchen window was pure bonus, a lottery ticket found in a forgotten winter coat pocket, cashed in and spent on something impulsive and frivolous.

It never gets old, living here.

While Patrick reacquainted himself with his workshop out back late in the afternoon, I made a batch of oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookies (he’s been asking me for years—they’re his favorite), filling the house with their buttery baked breath, and had three of them before dinner. To atone for our food choices on the road, we sank into the couch around 9:00pm, each of us holding a bowl of savory quinoa topped with steamed and sautéed vegetables, tahini, soy sauce, slivered almonds and only a mention of shredded cheese. That would cancel out any damage done by the pre-dinner cookie indulgence, I told myself. And I was right.

By grace and by gift, I am able to look back on myriad homecomings, some following the most joyous of events and others, broken-hearted and tear-stained circumstances beyond my influence. The common ground among them all is the welcome that only a familiar home can offer— nubby upholstered chairs that have followed me through the decades from apartments to houses, plush throws draped across the arm of the couch, and framed photos of family and watercolors right where we left them. We exhale into their “come and sit down” presence, leaving the unpacking for a few minutes as we untie our shoes and peel off the socks that have left their knitted imprint on our ankles. We walk from the living room to the bathroom, putting away toiletries and giving the mail on the coffee table a quick glance and a promise. It feels good to be stretched out to full height and moving without really going too far, and the cats are glad to see us (no opposable thumbs to open the food bin and scoop out a measure into their bowls, they’ve looked forward to this moment since our niece Andi last filled them around 3:00). In these first few moments, it’s easy to wonder why we left in the first place.

A full week ahead begins to play itself out in our minds, and we set about slowly acknowledging what we need to do to prepare for it, lest it rush forward and devour all of our residual energy. There’s a new appliance addition to the family—a shiny washing machine, delivered this morning, waiting to chew on our clothes for a while before spinning them damp-dry and spitting them out cleaner than when they went in, and I’m eager to empty the hamper into its silver-ringed maw. But for now, I’m content to look out the living room windows at the sun-dappled maple leaves, turned brown and dried by this morning’s gusty winds, as Patrick naps by my side on the couch.

Home. It’s almost like we never left.