The house smelled like toast and wet coats and I suddenly felt homesick for my own life

Dear Delyara, It’s hard to explain that sentence, but it felt true. The children had just come in from the rain, somebody had put toast on, there were damp sleeves over the radiator and school bags on the floor and noise in every room. Nothing in the scene was elegant. It was cluttered, loud, slightly annoying, undeniably real. And for one strange moment I felt homesick inside the middle of it, as if I had stepped briefly outside my own rushing participation and seen the texture of my life from a distance. I think what I felt was tenderness. Not only fatigue. There are days when domestic life feels like endless maintenance. And then, unexpectedly, a smell or a small scene reveals the whole thing as something living and dear, however exhausting it also is. I needed that glimpse. It made the evening lighter.