"Hearts will never be practical until they're made unbreakable."

Photo credit

So glad TBS is on its cinematic game today (first, Michael and Father of the Bride. Then, the 1960s How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Wizard of Oz).

Collapsing Cake

Today I learned two things: one, that over-beating butter or eggs for a cake can cause it to collapse; two, that Mercury (the planet) is in retrograde, causing everyone to act wacky and make rash decisions and forget how to behave like adults (at least more so than usual). I suppose these two things have absolutely nothing to do with one another, except for some punny connection between retrograding cake batter and retrograding planet (I’ll take it). This means I can blame my poor baking know-how on Mercury moving across retrograde degrees of Scorpio (about.com’s words, not mine).

Check out this opening paragraph from about.com, tweaked slightly to explain my #cakeproblems:  

This is a retrograde when you might lose sight of the oven, as insight comes in that takes time to integrate the egg whites. (Cake) Layers of reality can be revealed that are shocking or unlock what's been too painful to deal with frost. The cake tin comes later, with wisdom and a full sense of full bellies.

Makes perfect sense.

Below is the "before shot" of my collapsed cake. We'll be doing reconstructive surgery tomorrow.

caving in...

Home

What do you think of when you think of Home? I imagine there would probably be clean carpets and white walls, refrigerators filled with tasty leftovers, and cable television servicing multiple tvs in multiple living rooms maybe even in multiple homes. It sounds safe and inviting and fulfilling.

Admittedly, when I think of Home, I don’t quite have these idyllic images. My Home spans many houses, some filled with my mom and grandmother and sister in a modest-sized townhouse in the East Bay, some filled with my Dad and stepmom and sister on a wooded street in Iowa’s capital, and others filled with tiny apartments with tiny rooms in cities filled with strangers. In lots of these Homes, there was laughter (so much!) and dinners around a table. Other times, there was yelling,  tears, and a revolving door of situations, people, emotions, and outcomes. To say my Home was unstable makes it sound like I suffered. But to say it was stable discredits the life lessons received.

Home for me has never been one place; it’s been piece mailed together. Home is the house I lived in when my parents separated. Home is the house my grandmother let my sister, my mom, and I live in when the first one could no longer hold us. Home is on Ingersoll Ave in Des Moines that took us in when the one before had to take on new tenants. Home is Iowa, the place in which I grew UP. Home is California, where half my family awaits. Home is Chicago, Hotel Francisco, and my bed, to which I return every night (yes, every night). Home is a stepmom and stepdad, home is a divorce, home is a marriage, home is a neighbor, home is a graduation, home is a heartbreak, home is a sickness, home is a rebirth, home is a haven, home is revered and feared, always a haven.

Home isn’t one person; it isn’t one unit. It was never a family united, and it will never be found in one person exclusively. Home is little bits and fragments of memories and hopes and thoughts and confessions strewn across a country and a lifetime. The moment the search for Home stops and we begin to recognize this moment as a little sentence of the larger chapter comprising the book, is the moment missing home stops hurting.