"Miraculous"

It’s a Friday morning. My first class is at 3:30 in the afternoon, so if I were a normal college student, I’d be sleeping in - maybe not even setting an alarm - to take advantage of this one free morning after a short but busy week. My curtains would be closed against the autumn sun that usually streams through my window onto my face as it rises around seven, and I might have a pillow over my head to drown out the sounds of construction happening across the street.

But I’m not doing any of that. Instead, I’m as wide awake as would be possible at 8:00am, and my feet are pounding against the ground of the trail up to the top of Mount Royal. My music is loud, but over it I can still hear my rhythmic breathing and the splash of the gravel that scatters when my feet land on it. There are a few kindred souls out running with me, and whenever one of us passes the other, there seems to be a momentary camaraderie between us - If you can do this, so can I. If I can make it, so can you. I run on and on, not really conscious of the distance, and only vaguely aware of the passage of time when the song changes and I realize I’m already halfway through the Paramore album.

Every once in awhile, I wonder why I’m out here, fighting with a mountain and pushing my body to its limits when I could be at home in bed or eating pancakes or doing literally anything else. I feel the pain in my legs as my muscles cry out in protest when I try to force them to run faster up the stairs to the top. I tell myself, You can make this, and then I give up on being all self-motivational and just switch to, Come on, body. Please? Just to the top of the mountain? and finally after much pleading and pushing, my face set in lines of concentration so heavy I can feel them on my skin, I reach the point where gravel meets concrete, and stumble at last onto the flat, paved area we call Lookout Point. I slow my pace and gasp for air as I walk to the railing to look out over the city, not really caring what I see, just longing for respite from the run.

As my breath returns to a more normal level and my muscles relax, I start to notice how beautiful the city looks at this hour. The sun hasn’t come all the way up yet; it hangs just over the tallest skyscraper which - from here - actually doesn’t even seem that high any more. I close my eyes and breathe in the fresh autumn air that’s cold enough to feel as it enters my lungs, bringing with it the scent of fallen leaves still damp with dew and a hint of drying earth. I don’t usually appreciate this body of mine enough, I think. But now I am suddenly very aware of the beating of my own heart and the way it pumps the blood through me and how my muscles expand and contract to make me move and carry this rock-solid skeleton of mine wherever I want to go.

Do you ever stop think about just how amazing the human body is? Bones stronger than concrete, a brain with greater processing speed than any computer in existence, a mind capable of sentient thought and emotion and empathy and imagination, grief and joy, procrastination and motivation, creativity and love. Do you ever think about what a miracle your existence is? That out of all of the possible genetic combinations and mutations and reproductions and transfers you ended up you - improbable, seemingly impossible, miraculous, fantastical, and yet so commonplace that you only celebrate your birthday one day out of every 365 in the year? Do you ever just freeze for a moment and feel the air rushing into your lungs and the rhythm of your pulse and the plethora of stimuli that barrage your senses from all sides and yet somehow, your brain takes them all in and makes sense of them and then presents them all to you so that you, too, may understand your world?

I know I rarely think of these things. But it’s here, at the top of the mountain after I’ve pushed myself to my humanly limits - before realizing that actually, if I really wanted to, I could keep going - that I am struck with the miracle that is me. And suddenly I don’t care how far I’ve run to get here, because now I feel like dancing in celebration of the body, the mind, the soul, the single, miraculous, perfect life that is me.

Homecoming

It’s always different, coming back.

I’m starting to wonder if the reason I like traveling so much is not just that I go far away to see new places, but that in the end, I get to come home. I’ll never forget the first time I pulled into my neighborhood after moving away from home. It was dark and the windshield of the car had a bit of fog on it that blurred the lamps along the street into huge circles of gold. I hadn’t seen my family in two months. Now that time seems so short, but back then it felt like a lifetime. Finally we turned the corner onto my street, and as if on cue, the fog cleared from the windshield and I saw the pinpricks of light that lined the front walkway up to my house, my darling home. I caught sight of my family peering out the window, and could barely contain my excitement as I extricated myself and my backpack from the front seat, threw profuse thank-you’s to the friend who had driven me, and raced up the walk to the front door. As my hand reached for the handle, I paused. I savored that moment of silence and foreignity before the familiar smells and voices and bodies overwhelmed me. Now that I was here, I could stretch out that last bit of distance as long as I wanted to. So I took a deep breath, and then finally pushed the door open. “Steffie’s home!” called a voice - did it even matter whose it was? - and suddenly I felt familiar arms pull me into a hug, and the smell of home - the conglomeration of dust in the air conditioner and chili cooking on the stove and scented cat litter and that last untraceable smell that could be described only as “home” - washed over me.

I think of that moment once in awhile, sometimes when I’m missing home particularly badly and sometimes for no reason at all. Though now, I have an even stronger memory of homecoming that overpowers it every so often and stops me in my tracks. It’s a memory of a moment I had spent weeks and months imagining - the moment I finally pushed my baggage cart out of the international terminal and caught sight of my family for the first time in five months. I was almost blinded by the lights and the rays of sunlight coming in through the high windows at the top of the hall, and I squinted down the line of people waiting pressed up against the railings for that familiar trio that was my family. Almost before I could even recognize them, I saw a mane of curls fly under the railing as my mother climbed through and ran to meet me, pulling me into a hug. It was all I could do to hold back the last of the tears I would cry that long day - though at least these were happy tears.

It’s these moments that keep me going when I’m away from home, when I’m traveling with no intent to return home any time soon, and suddenly feel that pang of longing to walk back through the door of my familiar home and join my family at the dinner table. It’s certainly gotten easier to bear since the first time I moved away, but it never really goes away.

I guess it’s true that there’s no place like home.