Home

“Are you going home for Thanksgiving?” was a question that I heard often last week.

“Yes,” I answered. But the more people asked, the more the idea of home puzzled me.

Is home an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with a computer for editing, posters of Dylan and Lennon on the walls and cigarette butts in an ashtray? Is it a room 100 miles away that I can hardly walk in filled with clothes in boxes, marble-covered notebooks and memories? Or is it a room 20 miles from there with a bookshelf, a closet filled with forgotten memories and an exercise machine now filling the center of the room?

I find myself alone for the first time in weeks. I sing music at the top of my lungs, I talk to myself in funny voices and I treasure the silence and the freedom I’m experiencing. It’s 3:00 in the morning and I’m driving home after visiting friends in a neighborhood bar. This is not a normal activity for me, and I realize how much I’ve missed these moments of solitude.

I pull the car into its spot at the top of our hill and turned off the engine. The music I’ve been listening to cuts away to reveal what now seems to be incredible quiet. Far away from my Ipod and computer, I’ve been listening to the same cd for a few days, a mix my ex-girlfriend burned for me when I left for New York. I still know all the words.

I walk slowly down the hill toward the door, gazing up at the brilliant sky. I breathe the fresh air.

I push the door open and tiptoe inside. The house is full of guests and I am careful not to wake them. I open the refrigerator and search for a snack. I bend inside to get a closer look at the leftover turkey.

“Hey, Zac,” a sleepy voice startles me, “did you just get home?”

“Hey Mom, yeah, were you worried?”

She walks past me, her eyes squinting against the light, dressed in a nightgown, a robe and slippers. She nods.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Did you have a good time?”

“I did have a good time,” I tell her.

I had gone to a bar to meet an old friend of mine. It turned out to be a reunion of sorts, with many people I hadn’t seen in three years.

These were the first “old friends” of my life.

I was nervous while I parked the car. I stepped outside and buttoned my coat against the cold. As I walked toward the bar, I noticed a knot in the pit of my stomach, almost like going to a high school dance. I smiled.

An hour and a half later I found myself standing outside with what were, in seventh grade, my two best friends, laughing hysterically.

Back in the bar, I realized that aside some filled-out faces and all our patchy facial hair, everyone seemed about the same. It was great to see everyone and hear what they all were up to.

And leaving the bar, I could hardly remember why I had been nervous earlier in the night.

My mom listens intently to my story as I eat a large bowl of French vanilla ice cream. I talk for 10 minutes straight. I smile and laugh. I remember what I liked about high school. I remember what being in high school was like. I remember living at home.

Gone for a second was the stress of work, the speed of my life right now, slowed down for a moment. I relax.

I wade through a sea of clothes on my way to my bed and fall asleep immediately.

The next day I pack my stuff up for New York. My mom will drive me back and I stand in the living room counting on my fingers all of the things that I have to remember to bring.

“I think I’m ready,” I say to my mom and she quizzes me about frequently forgotten items.

“Do you have your wallet? Your cellphone? Your charger?” I nod. “Okay.”

As I leave, I take a last minute survey of our living room. I can already feel the pull of the city on my feet, already fearing it will suck me up yet again. I say goodbye to my dog and wonder if he still understands who I am.

He no longer sleeps in my room when I’m home, wherever that may be.