Oh, darn it.

My stupid heart just turned on.

I had spent the morning and a little bit of the afternoon reading Shannon Hale's Austenland, feeling deliciously enwrapped in escapist fiction, comfortably eating sandwiches and completely cut off from the world.

And then, later, as I was looking for a picture in one of my files, I came across all these images of my family and came to myself rather wrenchingly. I couldn't help dwelling over photos of my nephew, grinning with chapped lips and a snotty nose (and those wonderfully adorable blue, blue eyes) at the camera; my niece, face turned slightly away, eyebrows knitted, tongue (just visible behind an O-shaped mouth) tucked thoughtfully in the corner of her cheek; and my dad, eyes crinkling behind years of seeing his children grow from funny little monsters into funny (and sometimes helplessly lost and needy) grown-ups, eyes that I realized are just like mine.

I miss my family.

I miss my old town.

I want to go home and see the mountains and drive up the canyon until all I can see are aspen trees, leaves like coins turning yellow-gold in the ancient light of summer afternoons; I want to smell the mountain morning while walking up the hills on dusty trails, the heat from the early sun already squeezing my pores and making my eyes ache with light.

Please know this: I know I am here and I know I'm here for a good long while. And really, it doesn't bother me all that much. I like it here a great deal; I think, in time, I may even learn to love it.

But there's still a part of me that wishes I could have a piece of that old life in my pocket, just so I could, when I needed to, take it out and dive into a place that feels and is completely Home.