Coming home is an awkward shift, and sometimes it takes time.

I’m thinking about my dad coming home from work, every day, for years and years. His car would crown the crest of the hill, and he’d swing over to the mailbox across the road, and then pull in the driveway, turn the engine off.

The dogs would get so very excited about this.

Those first few minutes after arriving were a sacred thing. “I’m not really here yet,” he used to say, not unkindly, if we tried to talk to him before he was ready. He’d walk up the front steps and into the house, greet the dogs or cats or whoever was there, and put his dishes in the dishwasher and his bag on the hook on the back of the door, and then he’d say “I’ve got to change out of my work clothes,” and disappear into a closet off the laundry room, and take a minute to himself. He’d emerge in his comfortable sweats, tired, and then he’d be ready to be caught up in the things going on at home again. Or maybe not ready, but willing.

I’ve never thought of this habit as a ritual, but it could have been. I think that routine was most of what separated his work life from his home life, his work-self and home-self, his out-of-the-house mask and the face he wore for us.

Because, I think – the person you are at home isn’t quite the same as the person you are anywhere else in the world.

To anyone who needs to hear this today:

When you come home, remember to change into your comfy clothes. Take off your work face. Adjust to being surrounded by people who know all the things about you that a well-crafted facade can hide. The quirks and flaws and breaking points, the little-known strengths, all the growth and changes you’ve been through to get to where you are. It’s a messy and vulnerable and awkward space, and – not without work – hopefully a safe space, most of the time.

Most of the time. But sometimes there’s so much friction where the edges meet that the earth quakes. So I think that it helps to know where those edges are, just so that you can keep an eye on them.

When you’ve stepped out of the picture for a little while, and then you’ve come back, it sometimes takes time to remember where you used to fit in. Because the shapes of the edges have changed a little in the intervening time. Nothing stays the same – and it shouldn’t, really.

The place you came from won’t look the same as it did before you went out into the world and did the things, and you’re not quite the same, either. Going out into the world and doing the things has this way of doing that to a person.

And the genuinely uncomfortable thing is, things might not fit exactly the way they used to. And it might take time to acclimate, even in a familiar space. There might be shaky moments of wondering if there’s still a place for you, where there used to be.

But there is one. That’s the amazing thing. Somewhere, there is a place where you can put your feet on the table and snag food that you didn’t pay for out of the refrigerator and fall asleep on the couch and exist in a space where there are people who aren’t strangers who love you even though you’re frequently cranky and tired and very far from perfect.

It might take time, and that’s okay. But there is always a place to come home to, even if you’re different than you were before.

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

~ Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky.