I fall in love with places all the time.

I fall in love with places all the time.

I fall in love with the idea of permanence. The idea of ownership. Of being and belonging somewhere, for more than weeks at a time. I dream of what that existence might look like, and I fall in love with those dreams too.

I fall in love with homes I have only seen online. Imagining a morning routine of coffee on a porch, a kitchen full of friends laughing loudly over fast-emptying bottles of unoaked chardonnay. Arguments with my husband stolen in quiet corners. My clothes in the closet. My books on the bedside table.

I fall in love with neighborhoods that I am only driving through. Imagining saying hello to the postman by name. Ordering the regular at the corner deli. My children making lifelong friends, biking down the lane to the beach for hours on end, me keeping a watchful eye from a wide kitchen window.

It is worst with vacation homes.

In these homes the yearning for permanence, for ownership, can become an obsession. Every time I leave one, throwing the last handbag into our overstuffed SUV, I take one last, mournful walk through the property. I say goodbye to each room. I skim the walls and the furniture with my fingertips, trying to leave my mark. I want to become a part of this home the way it has become a part of me. I say thank you for the memories. I leave a piece of my heart behind, buried into worn couch cushions or slid discretely behind a loose wall panel.

This is why these places have ghosts. The real haunting is those who loved a place, for a lifetime, for a week, for a moment, and left it behind. No matter how long we stay, this place now holds days of loving and laughing with those I cherish most. I probably read a full book between these walls. I definitely cried some very real tears. I am changed by having been here.

Days were spent dreaming what life would look like if this was our daily reality: a wild and radical departure from our busy life in our little townhouse in our little city.

The temporary first amuses me with its charm, it then intrigues me, and captures me in it’s carefully crafted web. The need to possess can overwhelm me. I escape from my life on these vacations by diving deep into an alternate reality created by my imagination. What if we slowed down in mid-coast Maine? What if we crammed into a little pied-a-terre in Paris? Could we fit in among the sweeping willow trees and southern manners in Savannah? Could we make a life running this vineyard in Italy? Should we open a Roti hut in Sri Lanka?

Each of these places claims a part of me. A sacred place in my soul, reserved for dreaming. In my childlike heart, I still believe that this life is what we make it. A series of choices to obey or defy the rules we have had set for us, and those that we set for ourselves. A constant urge to rebel, quelled by a constant need for stability and familiarity. The desire for a non-traditional life juxtaposed against a backdrop of family barbecues and met expectations. The yearning for adventure contrasting starkly with sensible investments and a 401K.

My heart aches to know the permanence of belonging to all of these places. But, life is too short for all of my infinite wild yearnings to come to fruition. Every time I find my mind wandering to the far reaches of the universe of possibility, the eternal questions wrap around me like a scratchy blanket: would I really be happy here? Is this the life I want for my children? Once the vacation ends and real life begins, would the magic dissipate? Is this life better than the one I am living?

Maybe it is best I never know.

But I will always travel. I will always dream. I will always say goodbye. And I will always mourn the loss of places to which I never had any real claim. This is part of the joy of travel, and even considering all of the devastation accompanying true heartbreak, it is still one of the parts that fills me up most. It makes me feel. It helps me remember why it is important to dream.

To all the places I have loved: I hold you close, I dream of you still. And one day, I hope to return. Maybe for a visit, or maybe for forever. Who is to say what, or where, is “sensible” anyway?

-CJK