The second, I step off the plane, I feel at home. I’m not sure why that surprises me. I love this city. It represents a lot to me: diversity and temperance, culture and fulfillment. But the change is suddenly present, not dramatic just there and all-encompassing. Home.

As I walk through the airport, I wonder what it was. I have a home in Salt Lake City. It’s furnished, it contains my things, it has space and I spend a lot of time there. My friends come to visit. My children’s toys fill their room and we play together. But my home doesn’t feel like home, and this, this stretch of airport, does.

I take a moment to stop and sit and think and breathe. The air is different, the very atmosphere. It smells of ocean and green and freshness. A few minutes later, when I step outside, I can feel the breeze. I left Salt Lake this morning, already dry and heating up, my hands and lips uncomfortable. The air here makes me hungry.

I walk and the ground beneath my feet feels different. In time, I’m on the train and looking at the rolling green hills, the air filled with a light drizzle. People of every size and color sit around me, and I feel alive with wonder.

I watch the scenery flying by the window and I think of Utah, and all the effort I have put in there to make it feel like Seattle feels to me. I tried living downtown and walking the streets like I do here. I tried losing myself in coffee shops and writing about my experiences like I do here. I found some favorite places, divey pastry shops and indie movie theaters with sticky floors like I do here. But nothing sticks there for me.

Soon, I’m back on the sidewalks and I’m navigating an impossible hill as I tug my suitcase behind me, and I’m smiling. And it’s not just an inside smile, it’s one that I feel in my insides. I’m breathing deep and I’m smiling and my feet fall firmly with each step.

It isn’t as if my every memory in Seattle is a happy one. I struggled professionally here in a job that had impossible requirements. I missed my sons every day. I struggled to find friends. But that sense of wonder as I wandered the streets and the lakeshores and the rainforests never left me. I find it in small doses in other places, but it fills my being here.

My thoughts wander back to my sons again, their hugs and their antics, their daily routines. Being an active part of their lives is my highest priority, raising them to know they are loved, strongly and securely, by both of their parents, raising them into men who have full potential to lead happy and healthy lives. Providing for them with ample love and attention keeps me going every day. They fulfill me in a very different way. They make me happy.

As I walk, my eyes dart to familiar places. Conversations with friends in that book store, seeing a play in that theater, writing a poem in that coffee shop. This city is full of memories for me.

I stop again, breathing, and wonder how to find this sense of wonder in Utah, if that is even possible for me. And if not, how I can shape my career and financial future so that I can be there for them, and still keep this feeling for me.

I arrive at my destination, the place where I lived while I was here. I find my familiar park bench, looking out over Lake Washington. The water is choppy in the breeze. It’s 60 degrees and my skin feels cool and my heart feels warm and my hair is blowing back and I inhale until my lungs are full, and I whisper.

“Hey, Seattle. I’m home. Just for the weekend, but I’m home.”