I miss Europe. I miss traveling. I miss the beautiful sounds of foreign languages around me, the customs of the local people, their foods, their specialties. I miss the slow & content way of life there, the "biding your time over a cappuccino with a friend" mentality.
I've about finished putting our new home together, save two spare rooms upstairs that are still in need of furniture! While decorating, picking out fabrics, framing new artwork, I was subconsciously striving to create a getaway in our home. A Portugal, a Croatia, an Italy, a Sweden. An Africa, Prague, Salzburg, a Dublin. An Istanbul. A Germany.
I'm enjoying Georgia, but I realized that I don't want a home decorated for the South. I want a "well traveled home", as I now call it.
And so I've hung Polish pottery on the walls of my kitchen, scattered Moorish lanterns around the house, displayed our African animals, Portuguese cockerel, Swedish Dala horse, etc. on the mantle in the living room, hung framed watercolors of Portofino in the Guest Room, put Bougainvillea on the patio, laid our Turkish carpet in the bedroom...
We may never get our European life back, but I'm thankful that wherever the Army takes us, I can always take our Well Traveled Home, & that hopefully it takes us back, even just a bit, to the places that we've loved together.
