You know how when you walk into someone else’s house and it has a distinct smell, but as a kid you never really knew what yours smelled like because it was a norm to you?
You know you’ve been away too long when you can walk into your own home and smell it. For the first time a few weeks ago, I truly experienced what outsiders do when entering my childhood home for the first time.
Maple syrup.
I don’t know how necessarily, or why, but it made me happy that that’s the aroma that presents itself. It makes me think of all of the Sunday morning home cooked breakfasts after church and laughs shared around the big rectangular table in our kitchen that still resides. The table where when everyone is able to come back around for that one time a year get together- we still sit around- but now with added highchairs and stools just so we can fit everyone.
This place will always be home. It’s this place that helped form me into the person I am today. The place that made me fall in love with nature- the croak of the frogs at night, the peace of the night sky, and the smell of all of the seasons. It’ll never be goodbye, because this will forever be a place I come back to- but leaving this time is different.
I find myself now viewing my bedroom as “my childhood bedroom” which quite frankly, is just plain old weird. When did that switch even happen? When did all of these things go from being presently something, to “my childhood ___”.
The last few years, everything was temporary. When the semester ended, even if it were only for a couple of weeks, I’d come back here. My life still was rooted here. That cycle has been on repeat for years, and now it’s a weird feeling picking up and moving knowing it’s time to begin actual adulthood. The part of life where you actually have to choose where you want to land and begin a new life.
