It’s late June 2022, pandemic still a slow burn. 

I’m at my parents’ house, on the highest hill in Carlsbad, CA. Nightly, my dad draws dark curtains against the Pacific sunset. I’ve come alone, my sons back home in Chicago with my husband. This is by design. 

Blessed are those who hit the snooze button;
for they shall receive nine more minutes of sleep, unless they accidentally hit the stop button and awake in a panic an hour later.

For most people home is a house, at least in literal terms. It’s brick and mortar, floorboards, paint, and curtains. Maybe it’s where you’re born, where you raise your own family, or where you live with two of your best friends and a stray cat. It’s four walls and a roof that shelters you from the rain. It’s not that simple though, is it? Maybe home is a town or a city. Streets you can navigate on autopilot, familiar fish and chip shops, trees you used to climb and your footprints concreted into the sidewalk.

Specks of dirt and dust are nestled in the ridges of the soft carpet pressed against my cheek. The velvety surface wraps me in a layer of safety as I melt into it like a blotch of watercolor paint expanding gradually on paper. My little cousin, Pipe, lies next to me behind his father’s bass drum, one of the many musical instruments and loose items surrounding us. Past the instruments and piles of sheet music is an opening where light streams in from the Andean sky and into a plant-filled, pebbled courtyard.