Coffee & Cigarettes

Home is Never That Far

Photo by Anna Spoljar on Unsplash

For those that are fortunate, you learn you’re loved and in turn learn to love, at home. The welling up in the core of your being that you love your mother and father, brothers and sisters, grandpa and grandma. The comfort of knowing that no matter how far out into the world you go, there is a love that started at a place called “Home” that has carried you to wherever you are —a place called Home that no matter how far away you go, you can always come back. Sometimes you return via car and sometimes all it takes is the smell of fresh cut grass to find yourself playing outside your house again.

But home is more than a place; It is a feeling and it is people. Home is countless Christmas Eve’s spent in anticipation of presents to come and, as you got older, the realization that the real gift was in time spent with the one’s who made that day as special as it felt. You’re transported there after a phone call with your siblings as you recall childhood shenanigans. With endless possibilities, home is where you first began to dream of what you wanted to become and where it was quite alright to play make believe. Home is a place that has meaning and where you make sense.

Bound up in random memories, it is the place where the cups of coffee I’ve shared with my uncle on various occasions, have became more important than I ever would have suspected, and for no particular reason other than my remembering them. It’s where I actually believed my “Sonic the Hedgehog” shoes made me run faster. Sure, I recall big moments like my first kiss, receiving my masters degree, or the moment I got cast in my first school play— which marked the beginning of my love for the arts— but for whatever reason, these small moments have shaped me just as much.

The reunions with my Uncle typically involve me telling him about what I’m doing and him smoking a cigarette or two…or three… or four. I don’t smoke but occasionally it’s so cold that the sight of my breath might fool an onlooker into thinking otherwise. While the updates I provide range from consequential to inconsequential—with an emphasis on the latter— my uncle always listens with genuine interest, offering affirmations and asking questions in turn. We talk about our family, he shares the insights he’s gained in his years, and we laugh quite a bit too. Spending time with him feels like being at home. I don’t recall all the intimate details of these conversations but each of them, littered with cigarettes and coffee, have carved in my memory his unwavering support and love for me no matter what I’ve done or what I happened to be doing. Nothing grand necessarily happened, and yet, something grand did.

There are some of us who leave home in search of purpose and meaning. We aspire to great heights or to do something that makes a difference. I know I certainly have hoped for as much. It is not a bad thing to want to make a difference or to do something big but I think many of us assume that monumental accomplishments and moments of grandeur will endow our lives with the purpose we long for; we all want to be the hero or heroine who slays the dragon. But if there’s anything I’ve learned—and continue to learn— looking back on these inconspicuous coffee chats with my uncle and other little things like it, it’s that real purpose is cultivated much more in the day to day of our lives than from one particular day or accomplishment in our life. Maybe the real dragon we slay is not “what did you do with your life?” but "what did you do with today?”

So one day at a place called “Home”, I believed I could run faster with my “Sonic the Hedgehog” shoes on, and perhaps believing that was more important than whether or not I actually could. Another day, a few years later, I sipped on hot coffee while my uncle lit up a cigarette and we talked about life. And today, who knows what ordinary magic will find its way into my memory five years from now. I’m a long way from home and yet home is never that far from me.