tiptoes.

In those few early morning moments between slumber and lucidity, more often than not, I find myself still in dreams - anything or rather, anywhere is possible. I woke up this morning, face full of tangerine sheets, to what I thought was a former home. I expected to roll over to find Durham outside my window, my chosen family clattering breakfast dishes in the kitchen, rolling their bikes up the driveway, getting ready for the day ahead. Instead, I woke up 8-feet off the ground, overlooking a stretch of loft-converted warehouses, and the clattering of ice cream trucks being repaired next door.

For the first time since I’ve been up here, it stung. I wanted to call in sick to work, go spend the morning on the farm, catching up with my mama and sister, reveling in how much more J & K discover about the world each day. I wanted dinner with the rest of the fam, all of us laughing and shouting over one another, M and I trying to keep up a side conversation about this or that.

I wanted to have lunch in the sun at Foster’s with B or a front porch PBR with the one lady who knows that I’m the kind of girl who will wear argyle on the first day of school (even if they’re covered up by black cowboy boots).  I wanted to hear P’s laugh echo through the house accompanied by the jangle of Willie and Otis’ collars syncopated rhythmic play. Then walk a few blocks with the only decision needed to made that night would be whether we were going to play Wii or Settler’s until far too late.

Even more so, I wanted to be woken up by D playing the piano (or Modest Mouse at top volume), to have a conversation with K on the stairs that starts at something we need for the house and ends up somewhere completely opposite - most likely silly.Talk about life with E while sipping a home brew around the high-top kitchen counter.

It’s taken a while to accept that most folks I know from home do not deal in long distances. All of us, including myself, are too busy on the day to day to cast hour-long phone conversations across states. I only daily talk to my sister and/or my mama, those too growing more infrequent. But everyday, I do indeed miss them - that extended family that now stretches from ocean to ocean.

I catch a glance of the back of their head on the subway only to be disappointed by an unfamiliar face. I find the perfect gift for one in a corner bodega with only change in my pocket. I half expect to walk past their porches between the subway and the two flights of stairs that lead up to my new nest.

But to be fair, in order to satisfy my current need to be nostalgic about home, I have to hold my hand over that half of the snapshot and pretend for a minute that part of it never really happened. The rest of it, though, is still there in crystal clear focus, making it difficult to come home even for a short trip because all I need to see is one Kate’s smiles, and I’d probably be back for good.

Luckily, I get to live with the one person who is now home, whether in NC, Dubai or the moon, and I get to spend the weekend with one of my nearest and dearest. Oh, and I get to live in NYC, did I mention that too?