was it spring that made me such a slacker blogger?

Spring feels like coming home.

Over the past two months, I've tried composing perhaps a dozen posts in my head about spring and the newness of life. But none of them actually made it to the blog... and in the past two weeks, the trees around Pittsburgh have exploded from stark brown skeletons into being full of neon green. Today the sky is storm dark and every once in awhile the sun peeks out to highlight the leaves against the sky. It feels like home.

What is home? It's a popular question. I heard it often in college and in Bolivia, especially as so many of my friends and students grew up in many places, not just one. I participated in the conversations, but couldn't always relate to the ambiguity of questioning home. I have always been from Holland, Michigan. When I was nine, my family moved around the block. It always snowed in December; the tulips always came up in May; Lake Michigan was always to the west. But the other day, when asked where I was from, I said, "Mmm... Pittsburgh." Michigan was on the tip of the tongue, and Pittsburgh came out.

This next school year will be the third year that I've lived in my Pittsburgh apartment--which is the longest I've lived anywhere since high school. Does length quantify as home? In some ways, it feels like it should. But if that were true, then Michigan should still be the automatic response. Maybe rooted-ness? The semester is over now, and the pace of my social life hasn't changed so much... my Pittsburgh life is rooted in something other than the semester. But I don't think that defines home.

Wherever I've lived, home is the sound of rain on the window. The smell of wet trees (otherwise affectionately known as deciduous rot). Curling up under a blanket with a book and coffee to watch the rain. A barbecue cookout. Hammocking in the sun. Whether these sensations occur in Pittsburgh's spring, Michigan's fall, or Bolivia's summer, or Ireland's winter--it's these moments that always make me feel at home...

These senses go back to lazy days near the end of the school year, with the spring showers that crept into Tulip Time, when we danced with our wooden shoes in the rain (the original function of wooden shoes, btw--absorbing water and keeping the feet dry in the garden). Neighborhood parties of watching rain wash down the road from the front porch. Sitting in the tree fort listening to the rain pound on the roof while playing cards. Opening the windows to smell whatever Dad was grilling--or smelling the neighbor's grill.

So maybe it's that with the end of the semester and the coming of spring, I feel relaxed. Slightly lazy. A little like enjoying the fact that the semester is over and now follow weeks and months of being able to hike into the woods and splash in the rivers and listen to the rain. Spring always brings the most rain... and it feels like coming home.