“Because there’s something in a Sunday that makes a body feel alone” – Kris Kristofferson, Sunday Morning Coming Down, 1970
Home can be lonely. In the middle of a reunion, a birthday party, or Christmas—doesn’t matter—home can make you want a drink and to crawl into a dark hole. Once a black sheep, always the black sheep, because Rocket Man rocketed too far. My Dad showed me that song—a Sunday morning masterpiece of searching for home. The bittersweetness of life. We heard it on the radio first, Dad chiming in and saying “This is such a good song,” and soon it became our staple for the last leg of a road trip—a searching, a longing. Mostly for food. I think back then that me and my Dad were both searching for home. He found his. Me? I found an airplane. My own rocket to catapult me across the world to find something better, only to miss that place where I grew up that doesn’t exist anymore. I never really fit in, but there was a semblance.
Now I’ve lived three years in Dallas with roommates and my home has been confined to a single room. I think it is all I know. I unpack, then pack. One lease ends, and another begins—another U-Haul, another bargaining with my brother and his best friend to be my moving crew. My Dad uninstalls and reinstalls the washer and dryer. I leave for the day and come back a million times—leave the state or the country and come back—but when will I settle down? In a place all my own, where I can get a cat or fall asleep in the arms of someone I love? I have a complimentary Delta Airlines throw blanket on my bed right now to remind me that good times are ahead. Not all good things died when I stopped road tripping in the back of my Dad’s truck. There’s more to Sunday mornings than feeling alone, though that is often the case. Jose Gonzalez sings about magic in the air in “#9 Dream.” I want that to be my rocket. I want that to be the way I wake up thinking in the hours following a late night on the town. My breath stinks of booze, and the house is a wreck, but I will clean it again. Little routines I’ve made for myself—breathing life into whatever room I ended up with.
The truth is, I never end up with the best room, but it has always been the room I needed. I can shed the black sheep coat and be myself. Another Spanish lesson on a Sunday, another tidying up, another long drive to Oklahoma. Maybe a movie, maybe some words. House smell, in a good way. The way you miss it when you think back on a place. Home can be lonely. But it can always be yours.