Home Sweet Home

The wind whined sharply all night long as it twisted and turned through the apartment buildings of Via Tibullo. The branches of Ivy Delighted playfully smacked against my window, tossed as they were by the wind. The frail light started to peek through the slats of my shutters around 7 a.m. I'd been awake for at least two hours, fighting jet lag and longing to get back to sleep. Finally, I opened my eyes and looked about. I took in the peach-colored walls of the only place in the world I can say with finality is "my bedroom". I glanced down from my bunk bed and observed the keyboard that has been in my possession since I first started playing piano in fifth grade; the small desk made of fake wood that has housed my pre-adolescence secrets and supported hours and hours of homework during middle school; the whiteboard on my wall that hasn't been cleaned in over year, that has black and red marker etched into it permanently. I listened to the sound of the wind and the branches slapping my window and knew, like I haven't allowed myself to know for many years now, that I was home. I closed my eyes again and drifted back to sleep with pictures of jumping sheep floating through my mind next to the comforting awareness of being in a room that is full of the little bits and pieces of my childhood, a room that symbolizes my childhood.
     
I went on a walk a few hours later. The Bora was still blowing and it was good to get all wrapped up in my winter coat and head out into the windy world of Trieste, Italy. As I walked down the Viale, past the ugly fountain and then again up Via Coroneo, I knew that I was where I was supposed to be. I was in the place that, more than any other place in the world, represents my childhood. I was walking down streets that I grew up on, and it was good. It's been a good year, a strange year. I started the year in Italy, spent the next five months finishing up High School in Germany, spent the summer in Columbia, South Carolina, and then went to begin my first semester of college in tiny Wilmore, Kentucky. It seems fitting, however, that I am ending this year neither in Germany, nor Columbia, nor Wilmore, but right where it began: Trieste. It seems a confirmation of what I have slowly started to believe over the past several months: no matter where life takes me, no matter what adventures I embark on or exotic places I visit, home will always have a special place in my heart, and I will always, eventually, return. It reminds me of that one line from A Knight's Tale, the one that we laughed at the last time we saw it for being cheesy and kind of ridiculous. It was the answer to William's question of "how will I find my way back home?" and it was simply "follow your feet." I know that my feet will always bring me back home, and that is the light in my winter.