volume one hundred and seventy-four
homecoming
📍Written from a kitchen table on Bundjalung Country (otherwise known as The Gold Coast) with a ten-year-old pug at my feet while summer down under rain pelted the tar, let the sun come out, then pelted the tar again. Home.
👀👀👀 Did you notice anything different about the volume this week? My hot hot hot new photos and re-brand are thanks to the incredibly talented photographer and wonderful friend Skye Portman. Go check her out, or hire her to do magic things for you, too!
What else is new? I am switching these digital journals to fortnightly releases. What does that mean for you? You will still get a love letter from me each week, it will just alternate between a new volume of my writing — with a prompt for you to answer if you wish — and every other week will be a new release of my podcast My Dad Stole My Limelight. What does this mean for me? More time to spend on my writing, producing podcasts, crafting new stand-up material and dedicating myself to other big projects I have been working on in secret and hope to reveal to y’all at some point! Oh, and maybe more rest?! That would be nice, too.
When they think of stuffing as much as they possibly can into each and every day, it is not to skip lunch for a meeting or create back-to-back days. It is rubbing their dry eyes, desperately wanting just ten more minutes of playtime before bed despite being beyond weary. I promise them we can do more activities tomorrow, and I mean it.
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I am standing in the crowded driveway of an asbestos-built house of my dreams with humidity pooling on the backs of my knees. A two-human band plays us music from the garage as I try not to yell my answers to his questions in his ear between my toe taps and head nods. His friend asks if I am his girlfriend and I get to tell them that he was my crush when I was six years old. I haven’t seen him since high school.
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Seats in a row, armrests between each of us, a slightly musty smell overidden by popcorn, a stage ahead, filled with lack of lighting and anticipation. A balcony above sends excited murmurs from its inhabitants and an awe-inspiring ceiling above that. There was a time I spent every weekend with the people in our seats. Sleepovers, all of our birthdays, dinners, pool days, Fleetwood Mac and a vacuum hand in hand from Mum waking me from hangovers on Sunday mornings. Two of the seats are filled with people who we didn’t even know yet back then. They’re perfect additions to the family I slot myself back into, with ease.
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“Where are you housesitting at the moment?” is what she asked. I am in a different state to her, but it fails to occur to me I am only a thirty-minute drive away. Only a few hours later, after our morning obligations are met, we are facing each other enjoying a double scoop, nestled outside of the ocean wind in the gelato shop discussing our writing. I am invigorated by the weather, by the sugar, by the company, by the fact that I have a friend I can make impromptu plans with as if I live here.
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After we finish our meal he pays because he “hasn’t seen me in so long”. We both feel too polite to say how we really feel about the food until we leave. We decide to walk around the neighbourhood some more. We don't make it far before the winter cold making itself known in front of our mouths as we speak tells us maybe we will just save the rest of the chat for the next dinner that I will buy. We hug, for a long time, tight, with decades of love in the grasp. The plans for next time are real, even if our relationship in year three was not.
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“Lauren has lived overseas for so long, she’s not used to living in Australia anymore!” they joke, as their bikinis poke out from under their clothes. I just thought we would get hot chips and eat by the ocean. My mind recalibrates at that moment. I will wear my swimmers and bring a towel whenever the meeting location is within walking distance of the beach. How could I forget?
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I sit across from him at dinner after twelve years and anxiety rushes through my whole body because I was anticipating feeling something different. The last time I saw him I felt so much I thought I might not survive his work visa ending. I stare at the smile lines around his eyes that weren’t there the last time I looked at him. He tells me the one who knocked on my door at 3am, the one who felt for me the way I felt for him, didn’t make it past thirty-one. Unsure of what to say next, we laugh awkwardly with each other and say “So we look the same, right?”.
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He smiles at the sight of me despite having no idea who I am and I grab his hand and kiss his cheek. He never will know who I am again and yet this has become our new normal: I open Tupperware of baked brownies and pass them around, we all get a little sugar rush in the sun, and eventually he will look at me and pull the funny face he always did when I was little. He pops his teeth out, bulges his eyes, and then laughs. He’s still in there and I won’t ever stop visiting.
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It has taken a year and some change, but I feel I am planting my feet on the motherland. I am in my new era of shiny new object syndrome but for the familiar and long-forgotten. Returning. I am building new friendships and building back old ones. I am making space for games nights and group dinners and long coffees and “I’m bored, what are you up to?”. I am attracted to what I ran from for so long. It was never the people or the place. Surprise, surprise I was running from me. Everywhere I went, there I was. Finally, that’s a glorious thing.
Lovely reader, head into the comments and tell me about a recent day that felt like home.
something i struggled with this week:
🛹 I envy those whose only plans on a Saturday are to hang out at the skatepark until they’re hungry or tired or the weather turns. To not have anything else on the agenda, and to enjoy something so much you’d dedicate unlimited time to it, that’s a dream.
a blessing from this week:
💛 Vegemite on corn cakes left wrapped on my bed because I got in after everyone went to sleep after a long day of travel is the ultimate sign of love.
a goal for the coming week:
😌No mirrors in the caravan I stayed in meant no obsessing. When the choice is taken away it's amazing how long I can go without worrying if my make-up has caked in my smile lines, or if the sunscreen is rubbed in properly. It doesn’t matter. How could this happen more often?
pics or it didn’t happen:
I love you and I appreciate you reading my letters because I really enjoy writing them to you.
Such wonderful creative writing Lauren...This is what I would call outside the box writing....It not only draws in the reader but it makes us think and use our imagination as you drop images like the sweets that Hansel and Gretel used...Brilliant writing as always and I am so happy you found that beautiful home inside of you. No matter where you lay your head, your heart will always be home. Most never experience that awakening, you have arrived x PS. Gordy will always love you, no matter where he sits. Glad you got this time together x
Wow, Lauren, welcome home. What a profound shift. And I relate to this so much! These sentences crush it: “It was never the people or the place. Surprise, surprise I was running from me. Everywhere I went, there I was. Finally, that’s a glorious thing.”
For me, I spent 16 years of my adult life “running” abroad. Finally, I ran and found myself home. Really home. No more “have to” go. I can “choose to travel”, but it is no longer a compulsive wanderlust that has its joys and limitations.
Thank you for your gorgeous, generous writing.