home is everywhere.

It's easy to miss the beginning. Sylt, the teeny-tiny island where I made my beginning, comes up out of the water at a steady crawl. It's so gradual, so subtle, that you actually can (and do) take a train from mainland Germany to this island nestled in the icy waters of the North Sea. And you have to watch closely, nose pressed up against the window, for the moment when Sylt begins and the sea ends. That is how I go home - with my nose pressed against the window the whole time. Because I'm wondering if this is still a home for me, even though I can't speak the language anymore, and we no longer live here. Is it still a home, even if I am unsure I'll remember the woman waiting for me at the station, or look of the Kampen lighthouse perched along the grass and sand of the dunes? So I wait to meet Sylt again. I am anxious to see if we remember one another. And when that moment comes, the moment when the island comes out of the water and into its own, I smile. I exhale. I snap a picture of home.