Different shades of a holiday

Home from Philadelphia and thrust into a busy week, but what a lovely trip it was! More on the reading and the fascinating Ukrainian Club soon, but first some thoughts about vacations and visits.

Philly is starting to feel like home.

Fuzzy phone picture of me & Trillian Stars

One of the gifts of having friends in distant places is that when you stay with them and cultivate memories in their home city, it begins to feel like home.

The last time Kyle Cassidy stayed with us in Chicago, we talked about how it’s comforting to return to a friend’s home and have your gadgets recognized by the network, have their pets and/or children recognize you, and know where to find the water glasses. It’s so true.

When I was a child, we usually took one family vacation each summer–a road trip. We never really had family or friends to visit in those places. Our vacations were lovely and memorable, but they were hotel stays and swimming pools, parks and restaurants. There’s something very different about staying with, or visiting, friends. It transforms a vacation into a visit, and those are different shades of a holiday.

On a visit, if you’re very lucky, you can sleep surrounded by beloved books and cats, wake up to #morningCATface, get greeted by a skeleton out of the closet, and have a friend make you coffee.

Of course we miss our friends when they’re not in our hometown, but what a joy it is to experience home in different places.

Roswell's #morningCATface

Thank you, Kyle & Trillian Stars.

Published by Valya

Valya Dudycz Lupescu has been making magic with food and words for more than 20 years, incorporating folklore from her Ukrainian heritage with practices that honor the Earth. She’s a writer, content developer, instructor, and mother of three teenagers. Valya is the author of MOTHER CHRISTMAS, THE SILENCE OF TREES, and the founding editor of CONCLAVE: A Journal of Character. Along with Stephen H. Segal, she is the co-author of FORKING GOOD: An Unofficial Cookbook for Fans of The Good Place and GEEK PARENTING: What Joffrey, Jor-El, Maleficent, and the McFlys Teach Us about Raising a Family (Quirk Books), and co-founder of the Wyrd Words storytelling laboratory. Valya earned her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her poetry and prose have been published in anthologies and magazines that include, The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Kenyon Review, Culture, Gargoyle Magazine, Gone Lawn, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium. You can find her on Twitter @valya and on Mastodon.social @valya

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