8 Minute Memoir, Day 24: Retreat

Sitting here tonight in the living room, I feel pretty fortunate to have several places that I consider "retreats," my favorite places, most comfortable spaces.  I have such a fondness for where I was raised and where I'm living now and everywhere in between.  I feel sometimes like I have the ability to connect deeply to my environment and coexist with it, experiencing it all but not always being able to describe it or write it all down.  (That is in part what this 8 Minute Memoir adventure is about, getting back into the routing of "writing it all down" so to speak.  So far it's doing the trick!)

Anyway, our current apartment is my favorite of all the places we've inhabited together; on the 2nd of a 3rd floor walk-up, on a quiet block across the street from a Catholic church and school, not even half a mile from the Lake, a one bedroom with the best light in every room.  The kitchen is beyond tiny and the radiators sometimes sound more like jackhammers and there's barely enough storage space for the both of us, but it is charming despite all that--and it has a lovely back porch!

The building is 100 years old and the floors are kind of uneven... there's no laundry, no dishwasher... but it is comfortable, it is my place to land, it is home in every sense of the word.  Home is really just a state of mind more than anything else, anyway.  Still I feel beyond lucky to wake up in this city every day, lucky enough to enjoy this space: a retreat, our corner of the world.