Homecoming Weekend

This past weekend we enjoyed all things homecoming- college football and campus festivals, bar food and karaoke, good friends and late nights, t-shirts and Sperry’s. 

It was a really wonderful weekend and such a blessing to run into so many people I adore.

It was a bit nostalgic though. This has been my sixth UNI homecoming and each year I’ve been a student living in Cedar Falls, so there was no “home-coming.” I just wanted in anticipation for all the alumni to come back to town. But that might not be the case next year.  Sean and I could be on a completely new campus, in a new town, in a new state. We could be among the many who walk around looking for old faces and friendly hugs of those we once went to school with. We could be spending our mornings driving the streets of downtown commenting on all that’s changed since we left, reminiscing on what it was like back when.

When we moved to campus for the first time. When we got our first college jobs. When we had funny, blurry weekends with friends. When we found each other and when fell in love.

With my family living in Florida and no relatives residing in the town I grew up (or Iowa for the matter), I’ve often struggled with feeling settled. With feeling a home. And this weekend, thinking about the impending move away from this place, I found myself yearning for next year’s homecoming weekend. For our home-coming. Because this place has truly been just that.

Home.