Right Where You Belong

Christmas Eve will find me...where the love light gleams
I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.


At Grandma and Grandpa's house Christmas Eve Day, with snow falling quietly outside and children falling noisily inside, I thought of the lyrics to this song.  The last-minute rush had gone and I exhaled.  "This is where I belong," I thought.  What a relief to have nowhere else to be and no futher responsibilities, if only for a brief time.  It was just me, Scott, the family and 25 screaming kids on a peaceful Christmas Eve.  To some, that might not sound heavenly, but I knew in my heart, nestled on Marlene's couch, that I was home.  And that's what heaven is.  So I stayed for awhile.

If you haven't found a place where you feel you're home, or if you have lost that place, go and create one.  Give yourself the responsibility and the permission to be somewhere special on certain occasions.  One example that keeps coming back to me is the Guadalupe School.  I don't know if it still exists, but I once taught English to immigrants there, every Thursday night for a year or so.  I drove with two Chinese friends who went to learn English, Yaqing and Kitty.  I always had Thursday off waitressing at Lamb's because of the tutoring commitment.  I loved my little class of Latin American abuelas at the Guadalupe School.  I looked forward to driving there with Yaqing and Kitty, newly-arrived wives of violin making students who brought delicious and exotic cooking smells to the Rainier, our apartment building. They also brought a lot of giggling to our interactions, as we tried to communicate through a language barrier as thick as the Great Wall of China.  Speaking of language barriers, one Thursday, one of my elderly Guatemalan students brought a piece of paper on which she had written the word "nastumitchu," wondering what it meant.  My group spent the better part of our session figuring out that it meant, "Nice to meet you."  Light bulbs all around, even for the teacher!

My point is, I suppose the Guadalupe School would have been just fine without me, but I felt like I was home there every Thursday.  Friends were counting on me to drive them and teach them and be a happy presence, and I was counting on them to teach me, too.  We needed each other, we laughed together.  Anyone can create a slice of home for themselves, even out of nothing, and then one day you'll look around and feel like you're right where you belong.

For this Christmas, here's where I belong...

And here...