I’m back in School, which is another post in itself, but I don’t think I am feeling authentic enough to write it yet.

I wanted to share the paper I turned in for a writing assignment. The task was to describe your ideal home. I am hoping this assignment did a little manifesting, because as soon as Uncle Jassy goes to college this really is the life plan. 

 My Ideal home has four Michelin radial black tires, and an undersized spare hidden in the back. The phrase “Living the Dream” is  printed along the side of the white aluminum skin. It is scrawled in a font my husband did not; and would never approve of, but  he had no choice in the matter since he had no idea I had chosen that particular font until our new home was sitting in the driveway of our old one.

One unseasonably warm February evening two years before we drove  The Dream off the lot We decided that a home didn’t have to be stationary, or riddle your monthly payments with PMI. We had just tucked the last of our three small children into his warm bed in his own room.  A New England Winter evening in the forties calls for some recognition so we slid open the brand new glass slider and sat on the stairs of our back porch observing the expansive yard. Plastic toys weathered and rotted underneath the stairs, dog toys partially chewed beneath the trampoline. The amount of stuff felt unbearably clogging.

 The drudging routine of  typical American life is far behind us now. Our days are spent driving through cities that were just circles on a map posted on our old periwinkle kitchen wall, calling us to this adventure. Don’t get me wrong some days 400 square feet for 5 people, and two dogs feels  like it sounds. It’s too hot, too loud, too messy. The never ending fields of wheat in the midwest of the country seem to become a black hole. Transporting you into an alternate dimension where minutes on the clock stop moving. Other times I am blown away by the perfection of this moving house. The rolling mountains of Colorado seem to do the complete opposite. A month spent along the Rockies goes by in a blink of an eye. Even more beautiful than majestic mountains, and by far my favorite times in the Rv are at night when the sleepy breath of my babies turns the night air into a symphony heard only in my heart.

 The limitless adventure often outweighs the fact that the one toilet for five people needs to be pumped more than I anticipated when flipping through RV feature catalogues on my oversized, decadent, reclining leather sofa. The size of the bathroom reminds me of my old linen closet. You can pretty much wash your hands while you pee.  School books often  sit haphazardly on the only table, along side a half full mason jar of water begging for someone to walk by and knock it over. Toys always spill out of containers right onto the space on the floor in front of the stove as I am opening it up to put in our dinner. An entire chicken dinner was once taken out by a bucket of Legos.My life has become a perfect kind of chaos.

 On rare occasions when all three of my children can agree on something to watch they snuggle up on our queen size bed in our master bedroom. It is called a master , because it can actually fit a small dresser in with the bed. Yes, it is a pretty narrow fit, but all the drawers open, and that’s good enough for me.  The kids  love to  pull up the bright flowered duvet cover to their chins, and watch a show on the lap top. It guarantees me twenty minutes of not having to be anything else but an observer of beauty. No refereeing disputes, cooking, drying up spilled water, or planning back up dinners. Just a small amount of time to sneak up to the passenger’s seat and sit beside my husband.

 My husband can be found whistling in between sips of his gone cold black coffee. I catch him looking back into the rear view mirror and smiling at our three children. Covers pulled up giggling over something Gordon Ramsey is saying to a home cook  want to be chef. He smiles wide and then squeezes my hand.

My Ideal home for the moment has wheels, but one of the many things I have learned during this adventure is that there really can never be an ideal home, because home is not a place it’s a feeling.