One thing that is consistently hard for me is missing special days, like holidays and birthdays. My biggest downfall when living away from home is thinking of what I'd be doing if I were home.
Home is a funny word. It's not a place, it's a concept, almost like a state of being.
Example sentence: If I were scared, I would scream. (a feeling)
If I were in Alaska, I would be cold. (a place, but it needs a preposition in front of it: in Alaska, at the store, on a rooftop.)
If I were home, I would ____. You don't need a preposition. It isn't a feeling. It is just home. And yet it's relative. Anyone can be home, and they would be in completely different places. Here at work (in Rio) I might say, "I'm going home now." But when I say "if I were home"...I mean Pittsburgh, which will probably always be what I refer to as home no matter how many years I live here.
If I were home today, well...I would be at work, yes. But I would plan for Saturday to go out to Cranberry with my mom. We would do all the typical Cranberry things she likes to do - go to Costco, shop around in some stores. Then I would take her for lunch at Aladdin's. We would have fattoush and hummus for appetizers, and lamb in some form for our meals. After, I would insist that she get dessert. We would each have borma. She would argue to pay the bill, or at least half, and I would say, "No. It's your birthday, you are not paying." She would pester me so much that I would finally let her leave the tip, and she would generously leave at least 20% even if the service wasn't great.
Then we would plan to go see a movie. We would have finished everything else early and have at least an hour to wait before the movie. Knowing that I was planning to pay, she would say, "Frankly I'd rather just go home." I would argue that it's her birthday and we should do something special, and she would say, "We can just get a movie On-Demand." I would finally agree and we would go home. Hannibal would leap around happily, as he had been wondering if we would ever come home, since the concept of five minutes versus one hour or half a day is lost on him. We would unload the car, and it would take Mom at least an hour to settle in. When we sat down she would exclaim, "Oh, it feels so good to just sit." Hannibal would settle himself into her lap. "Let's find a movie?"
We would go through the hundreds of titles on all the different channels and settle on nothing. We would sit, talking. I would fall asleep on the couch while she would manage to find the Saturday episodes of Judge Judy on some channel. She would doze off as well. We would wake up, cook dinner together, and when dinner came she would have a glass of wine. After dinner as she drank her coffee, she would say, "Thank you for a lovely birthday. Today was just perfect."
And I would reply, "You're welcome, Mom. I love you."
But I'm not there, so we will both have to settle for this day in our minds. I do love you, Mom. I'm sorry I'm so far away today.
Home is a funny word. It's not a place, it's a concept, almost like a state of being.
Example sentence: If I were scared, I would scream. (a feeling)
If I were in Alaska, I would be cold. (a place, but it needs a preposition in front of it: in Alaska, at the store, on a rooftop.)
If I were home, I would ____. You don't need a preposition. It isn't a feeling. It is just home. And yet it's relative. Anyone can be home, and they would be in completely different places. Here at work (in Rio) I might say, "I'm going home now." But when I say "if I were home"...I mean Pittsburgh, which will probably always be what I refer to as home no matter how many years I live here.
If I were home today, well...I would be at work, yes. But I would plan for Saturday to go out to Cranberry with my mom. We would do all the typical Cranberry things she likes to do - go to Costco, shop around in some stores. Then I would take her for lunch at Aladdin's. We would have fattoush and hummus for appetizers, and lamb in some form for our meals. After, I would insist that she get dessert. We would each have borma. She would argue to pay the bill, or at least half, and I would say, "No. It's your birthday, you are not paying." She would pester me so much that I would finally let her leave the tip, and she would generously leave at least 20% even if the service wasn't great.
Then we would plan to go see a movie. We would have finished everything else early and have at least an hour to wait before the movie. Knowing that I was planning to pay, she would say, "Frankly I'd rather just go home." I would argue that it's her birthday and we should do something special, and she would say, "We can just get a movie On-Demand." I would finally agree and we would go home. Hannibal would leap around happily, as he had been wondering if we would ever come home, since the concept of five minutes versus one hour or half a day is lost on him. We would unload the car, and it would take Mom at least an hour to settle in. When we sat down she would exclaim, "Oh, it feels so good to just sit." Hannibal would settle himself into her lap. "Let's find a movie?"
We would go through the hundreds of titles on all the different channels and settle on nothing. We would sit, talking. I would fall asleep on the couch while she would manage to find the Saturday episodes of Judge Judy on some channel. She would doze off as well. We would wake up, cook dinner together, and when dinner came she would have a glass of wine. After dinner as she drank her coffee, she would say, "Thank you for a lovely birthday. Today was just perfect."
And I would reply, "You're welcome, Mom. I love you."
But I'm not there, so we will both have to settle for this day in our minds. I do love you, Mom. I'm sorry I'm so far away today.
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