Seeing home after being gone for so long is emotional. Its hard work. 

It makes me cry every single time. The air smells a certain way there.  In winter time, it’s a mix of potato stew and burnt Christmas trees. Everything is so familiar and friendly yet so different and distant. There is a unmeasurable joy in my heart to find the things and people that I love still there. The things that are unchanged. The things that did change I find frustrating. Its almost like someone came into my home and re arranged my cupboards and now I cant find my favorite coffee mug. Every time I go back something else changes. Little by little the place that was once so familiar to me is now a mystery.The air smells the same. That smell is where all my memories dance together. Smell and taste are really the most comforting of senses. When you miss something dearly, like I miss home sometimes, you can smell it. You can taste it. That never changes.

I smell my morning walk to school sometimes. I have several different days in memory that I rotate according to season. The one I am most fond of, is a late fall day. The air is fresh and cold and it smells like piles of burned leaves on the side of the road. I can see my breath so I borrow my nose deeper in my scarf.  I close my eyes and take a deep warm breath...

Clearly, home is where your nose tells you it is.